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Title: Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. 22, March, 1852, Volume
4.

Release date: June 26, 2010 [eBook #32983]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32983

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARPER'S NEW
MONTHLY MAGAZINE, NO. 22, MARCH, 1852, VOLUME 4. ***

Harper's

New Monthly Magazine

No. XXII.—March, 1852.—Vol. IV.

Contents

Rodolphus.—A Franconia Story. By Jacob Abbott.
Recollections Of St. Petersburg.
A Love Affair At Cranford.
Anecdotes Of Monkeys.
The Mountain Torrent.
A Masked Ball At Vienna.

The Ornithologist.
A Child's Toy.
“Rising Generation”-Ism.
A Taste Of Austrian Jails.
Who Knew Best?
My First Place.
The Point Of Honor.
Christmas In Germany.
The Miracle Of Life.
Personal Sketches And Reminiscences. By Mary Russell Mitford.
Recollections Of Childhood.
Married Poets.—Elizabeth Barrett Browning—Robert Browning.
Incidents Of A Visit At The House Of William Cobbett.
A Reminiscence Of The French Emigration.
The Dream Of The Weary Heart.
New Discoveries In Ghosts.
Keep Him Out!
Story Of Rembrandt.
The Viper.
Esther Hammond's Wedding-Day.
My Novel; Or, Varieties In English Life.
A Brace Of Blunders By A Roving Englishman.
Public Executions In England.
What To Do In The Mean Time?
The Lost Ages.
Blighted Flowers.
Monthly Record of Current Events.
United States.
Mexico.
Great Britain.
France.
Austria And Hungary.
Editor's Table.
Editor's Easy Chair
Editor's Drawer.
Literary Notices.
A Leaf from Punch.

Fashions for March.
Footnotes

[pg 433]

Rodolphus.—A Franconia Story. By Jacob 1

Abbott.

scene of the story.

Franconia, a village among the mountains at the North.

principal persons.

Rodolphus.

Ellen Linn: his sister, residing with her aunt up the glen.

Annie Linn, a younger sister.

Antoine Bianchinette, a French boy, at service at Mrs. Henry's, a short
distance from the village. He is called generally by grown people Antonio,
and by the children Beechnut.

Malleville, Mrs. Henry's niece.

Alphonzo, called commonly Phonny, her son.

Mr. Keep, a lawyer.

Chapter I.

The manner in which indulgence and caprice on the part of the parent, lead
to the demoralization and ruin of the child, is illustrated by the history of
Rodolphus.

I. Bad Training.

Rodolphus, whatever may have been his faults, was certainly a very
ingenious boy. When he was very young he made a dove-house in the end of
his father's shed, all complete, with openings for the doves to go in and out
in front, and a door for himself behind. He made a ladder, also, by which he
could mount up to the door. He did all this with boards, which he obtained
from an old fence, for material, and an ax, and a wood saw, for his only
tools. His father, when he came to see the dove-house, was much pleased
with the ingenuity which Rodolphus had displayed in the construction of it
—though he found fault with him for taking away the boards from the fence
without permission. This, however, gave Rodolphus very little concern.

The Rabbit House.

When the dove house was completed, Rodolphus obtained a pair of young
doves from a farmer who lived about a mile away, and put them into a nest
which he made for them in a box, inside.

At another time not long after this, he formed a plan for having some rabbits,
and accordingly he made a house for them in a corner of the yard where he
lived, a little below the village of Franconia. He made the house out of an
old barrel. He sawed a hole in one side of the barrel, near the bottom of it, as

it stood up upon one end—for a door, in order that the rabbits might go in
and out. He put a roof over the top of it, to keep out the rain and snow. He
also placed a keg at the side of the barrel, by way of wing into the building.
There was a roof over this wing, too, as well as over the main body of the
house, or, rather, there was a board placed over it, like a roof, though in
respect to actual use this covering was more properly a lid than roof, for the
keg was intended to be used as a store-room, to keep the provisions in,
which the rabbits were to eat. The board, therefore, which formed the roof of
the wing of the building, was fastened at one edge, by leather hinges, and so
could be lifted up and let down again at pleasure.

Rodolphus's mother was unwilling that he should have any rabbits. She
thought that such animals in Rodolphus's possession would make her a great
deal of trouble. But Rodolphus said that he would have some. At least, he
said, he would have one.

Rodolphus was standing in the path, in front of the door of his mother's
house, when he said this. His mother was upon the great flat stone which
served for a step.

“But Beechnut asks a quarter of a dollar for his rabbits.” said his mother, in
an expostulating tone, “and you have not got any money.”

“Ah, but I know where I can get some money,” said Rodolphus.

“Where?” said his mother.

[pg 434]
“Father will give it to me,” said Rodolphus.

“But I shall ask him not to give it to you,” said his mother.

“I don't care,” said Rodolphus. “I can get it, if you do.”

“How?” asked his mother.

Rodolphus did not answer, but began to turn summersets and cut capers on
the grass, making all sorts of antic gestures and funny grimaces toward his
mother. Mrs. Linn, for that was his mother's name, laughed, and then went

into the house, saying, as she went, “Oh, Rolf, Rolf, what a little rogue you
are!”

Rodolphus's father was a workman, and he was away from home almost all
the day, though sometimes Rodolphus himself went to the place where he
worked, to see him. When Mr. Linn came home at night, sometimes he
played with Rodolphus, and sometimes he quarreled with him: but he never
really governed him.

For example, when Rodolphus was a very little boy, he would climb up into
his father's lap, and begin to feel in his father's waistcoat pockets for money.
If his father directed him not to do so, Rodolphus would pay no regard to it.
If he attempted to take Rodolphus's hands away by force, Rodolphus would
scream, and struggle; and so his father, not wishing to make a disturbance,
would desist. If Mr. Linn frowned and spoke sternly, Rodolphus would tickle
him and make him laugh.

Finally, Rodolphus would succeed in getting a cent, perhaps, or some other
small coin, from his father's pocket, and would then climb down and run
away. The father would go after him, and try all sorts of coaxings and
threatenings, to induce Rodolphus to bring the cent back—while Mrs. Linn
would look on, laughing, and saying, perhaps, “Ah; let him have the cent,
husband. It is not much.”

Being encouraged thus by his mother's interposition, Rodolphus would of
course persevere, and the contest would end at last by his keeping the
money. Then he would insist the next day, on going into the little village
close by, and spending it for gingerbread. He would go, while eating his
gingerbread, to where his father was at work, and hold it up to his father as
in triumph—making it a sort of trophy, as it were, of victory. His father
would shake his finger at him, laughing at the same time, and saying, “Ah,
Rolf! Rolf! what a little rogue you are!”

Rodolphus, in fact, generally contrived to have his own way in almost every
thing. His mother did not attempt to govern him; she tried to manage him;
but in the end it generally proved that he managed her. In fact, whenever he
was engaged in any contest with his mother, his father would usually take
the boy's part, just as his mother had done in his contests with his father.

For instance, one winter evening when he was quite a small boy, he was
sitting in a corner playing with some blocks. He was building a saw-mill.
His mother was at work in a little kitchen which opened into the room where
he was at play. His father was sitting on the settle, by the fire, reading a
newspaper. The door was open which led into the kitchen, and Rodolphus,
while he was at work upon his mill, watched his mother's motions, for he
knew that when she had finished the work which she was doing, and had
swept up the room, she would come to put him to bed. So Rodolphus went
on building the mill, and the bridge, and the flume which was to convey the
water to his mill, listening all the time to the sounds in the kitchen, and
looking up from time to time, with a very watchful eye, at the door.

At length he heard the sound of the sweeping, and a few minutes afterward
his mother appeared at the door, coming in. Rodolphus dropped his blocks,
sprang to his feet, and ran round behind the table—a round table which stood
out in the middle of the room.

“Now, Rodolphus,” said his mother, in a tone of remonstrance, looking at the
same time very seriously at him. “It is time for you to go to bed.”

Rodolphus said nothing, but began to dance about, looking at his mother
very intently all the time, and moving this way and that, as she moved, so as
to keep himself exactly on the opposite side of the table from her.

“Rodolphus!” said his mother, in a very stern and commanding tone. “Come
to me this minute.”

Rodolphus continued his dancing.

Rodolphus's mother was a very beautiful young woman. Her dark glossy
hair hung in curls upon her neck.

When she found that it did no good to command Rodolphus, the stern
expression of her face changed into a smile, and she said,

“Well, if you won't come, I shall have to catch you, that's all.”

So saying, she ran round the table to catch him. Rodolphus ran too. His
mother turned first one way and then the other, but she could not get any

nearer to the fugitive. Rodolphus kept always on the farthest side of the table
from her. Presently Mr. Linn himself looked up and began to cheer
Rodolphus, and encourage him to run; and once when Mrs. Linn nearly
caught him and he yet escaped, Mr. Linn clapped his hands in token of his
joy.

Mrs. Linn was now discouraged: so she stopped, and looking sternly at
Rodolphus again, she said,

“Now, Rodolphus, you must come to me. Come this minute. If you don't
come, I shall certainly punish you.” She spoke these words with a great deal
of force and emphasis, in order to make Rodolphus think that she was really
in earnest. But Rodolphus did not believe that she was in earnest, and so it
was evident that he had no intention to obey.

Mrs. Linn then thought of another plan for catching the fugitive, which was
to push the table along to one side of the room, or up into a corner, and get
Rodolphus out from behind it in that way. So she began to push. Rodolphus
[pg 435] immediately began to resist her attempt, by pushing against the
table himself, on the other side. His mother was the strongest, however, and
she succeeded in gradually working the table, with Rodolphus before it, over
to the further side of the room, notwithstanding all the efforts that he made
to prevent it. When he found at last that he was likely to be caught, he left
the table and ran behind the settle where his father was reading. His mother
ran after him and caught him in the corner.

She attempted to take him, but Rodolphus began to struggle and scream, and
to shake his shoulders when she took hold of them, evincing his
determination not to go with her. At the same time he called out, “Father!
father!”

His father looked around at the end of the settle to see what was the matter.

“He won't let me put him to bed,” said Mrs. Linn, “and it was time half an
hour ago.”

“Oh, let him sit up a little while longer if he likes,” said Mr. Linn. “It's of no
use to make him cry.”

Mrs. Linn reluctantly left Rodolphus, murmuring to herself that he ought to
go to bed. Very soon, she said, he would be asleep upon the floor. “I would
make him go,” she added, “only if he cries and makes a noise, it will wake
Annie.”

In fact Annie was beginning to move a little in the cradle then. The cradle in
which Annie was sleeping was by the side of the fire, opposite to the settle.
Mrs. Linn went to it, to rock it, so that Annie might go to sleep again, and
Rodolphus returned victorious to his mill.

These are specimens of the ways in which Rodolphus used to manage his
father and mother, while he was quite young. He became more and more
accomplished and capable in attaining his ends as he grew older, and finally
succeeded in establishing the ascendency of his own will over that of his
father and mother, almost entirely.

He was about four years old when the incidents occurred which have been
just described. When he was about five years old, he used to begin to go and
play alone down by the water. His father's house was near the water, just
below the bridge. There were some high rocks near the shore, and a large flat
rock rising out of the water. Rodolphus liked very much to go down to this
flat rock and play upon it. His mother was very much afraid to have him go
upon this rock, for the water was deep near it, and she was afraid that he
might fall in. But Rodolphus would go.

The road which led to Mr. Linn's from the village, passed round the rocks
above, at some distance above the bank of the stream. There was a fence
along upon the outer side of the road, with a little gate where Rodolphus
used to come through. From the gate there was a path, with steps, which led
down to the water. At one time, in order to prevent Rodolphus from going
down there, Mr. Linn fastened up the gate. Then Rodolphus would climb
over the fence. So his father, finding that it did no good to fasten up the gate,
opened it again.

Not content with going down to the flat stone contrary to his mother's
command, Rodolphus would sometimes threaten to go there and jump off,
by way of terrifying her, when his mother would not give him what he
wanted. This would frighten Mrs. Linn very much, and she would usually

yield at once to his demands, in order to avert the danger. Finally she
persuaded her husband to wheel several loads of stones there and fill up the
deep place, after which she was less uneasy about Rodolphus's jumping in.

Rodolphus was about ten years old when he made his rabbit house. Annie,
his sister, had grown up too. She was two years younger than Rodolphus,
and of course was eight. She was beautiful like her mother. She had blue
eyes, and her dark hair hung in curls about her neck. She was a gentle and
docile girl, and was often much distressed to see how disobedient and
rebellious Rodolphus was toward his father and mother.

She went out to see the rabbit house which Rodolphus had made, and she
liked it very much See wished that her mother would allow them to have a
rabbit to put into it, and she said so, as she stood looking at it, with her hands
behind her.

“I am sorry, that mother is not willing that you should have a rabbit,” said
she.

“Oh, never mind that,” said Rodolphus, “I'll have one for all that, you may
depend.”

That evening when Mr. Linn came home from his work, he took a seat near
the door, where he could look out upon the little garden. His mother was
busy setting the table for tea.

“Father,” said Rodolphus, “I wish you would give me a quarter of a dollar.”

“What for,” said Mr. Linn.

“To buy a rabbit,” said Rodolphus.

“No,” said his mother, “I wish you would not give him any money. I have
told him that I don't wish him to have any rabbits.”

“Yes,” said Rodolphus, speaking to his father. “Do, it only costs a quarter of
a dollar to get one, and I have got the house all ready for him.”

“Oh, no, Rolfy,” said his father. “I would not have any rabbits. They are
good for nothing but to gnaw off all the bark and buds in the garden.”

Here there followed a long argument between Rodolphus on the one side,
and his father and mother on the other, they endeavoring in every possible
way to persuade him that a rabbit would be a trouble and not a pleasure. Of
course, Rodolphus was not to be convinced. His father however, refused to
give him any money, and Rodolphus ceased to ask for it. His mother thought
that he submitted to his disappointment with very extraordinary good-humor.
But the fact was, he was not submitting to disappointment at all. He had
formed another plan.

He began playing with Annie about the yard [pg 436] and garden, saying no
more, and apparently thinking no more about his rabbit, for some time. At
last he came up to his father's side and said,

“Father, will you lend me your keys?”

“What do you want my keys for?” asked his father.

“I want to whistle with them,” said Rodolphus. “Annie is my dog, and I want
to whistle to her.”

“No,” said his father, “you will lose them. You must whistle with your
mouth.”

“But I can't whistle with my mouth, Annie makes me laugh so much. I must
have the keys.”

So saying, Rodolphus began to feel in his father's pockets for the keys. Mr.
Linn resisted his efforts a little, remonstrating with him all the time, and
saying that he could not let his keys go. Rodolphus, however, persevered,
and finally succeeded in getting the keys, and running away with them.

His father called him to come back, but he would not come.

Rodolphus whistled in one of the keys a few minutes, playing with Annie,
and then, after a little while, he said to her, in a whisper, and in a very
mysterious manner,

“Annie, come with me!”

So saying, he went round the corner of the house, and there entering the
house by means of a door which led into the kitchen, he passed through into
the room where his father was sitting, without being seen by his father. He
walked very softly as he went, too, and so the sound of his footsteps was not
heard. Annie remained at the door when Rodolphus went in. She asked him
as he went in what he was going to do, but Rodolphus only answered by
saying in a whisper, “Hush! Wait here till I come back.”

Rodolphus crept slowly up to a bureau which stood behind a door. There was
a certain drawer in this bureau where he knew that his father kept his money.
He was going to open this drawer and see if he could not find a quarter of a
dollar. He succeeded in putting the key into the key-hole, and in unlocking
the drawer without making much noise. He made a little noise, it is true, and
though his father heard it as he sat at the door looking out toward the garden,
his attention was not attracted by it. He thought, perhaps, that it was
Rodolphus's mother, doing something in that corner of the room.

Rodolphus pulled the drawer open as gently and noiselessly as he could. In a
corner of the drawer he saw a bag. He knew that it was his father's money-
bag. He pulled it open and put his hand in, looking round at the same time
stealthily, to see whether his father was observing him.

Just at that instant, Mr. Linn looked round.

“Rolf, you rogue,” said he, “what are you doing'”

Rodolphus did not answer, but seized a small handful of money and ran. His
father started up and pursued him. Among the coins which Rodolphus had
seized there was a quarter of a dollar, and there were besides this several
smaller silver coins, and two or three cents. Rodolphus took the quarter of a
dollar in one hand, as he ran, and threw the other money down upon the
kitchen floor. His father stopped to pick up this money, and by this means

Rodolphus gained distance. He ran out from the kitchen into the yard, and
from the yard into the road—his father pursuing him. Rodolphus went on at
the top of his speed, filling the air with shouts of laughter.

He scrambled up a steep path which led to the top of the rocks; his father
stopped below.

“Ah, Rolfy!” said his father, in an entreating sort of tone. “Give me back that
money; that's a good boy.”

Rolfy did not answer, but stood upon a pinnacle of the rock, holding one of
his hands behind him.

“Did you throw down all the money that you took,” said his father.

“No,” said Rodolphus.

“How much have you got now?” said his father.

“A quarter of a dollar,” said the boy.

“Come down, then, and give it to me,” said his father. “Come down this
minute.”

“No,” said Rodolphus, “I want it to buy my rabbit.”

Mr. Linn paused a moment, looking perplexed, as if uncertain what to do.

At length he said,

“Yes, bring back the money, Rolfy, that's a good boy, and to-morrow I'll go
and buy you a rabbit myself.”

Rodolphus knew that he could not trust to such a promise, and so he would
not come. Mr. Linn seemed more perplexed than ever. He began to be
seriously angry with the boy, and he resolved, that as soon as he could catch
him, he would punish him severely: but he saw that it was useless to attempt
to pursue him.

Rodolphus looked toward the house, and there he saw his mother standing at
the kitchen-door, laughing. He held up the quarter of a dollar toward her,
between his thumb and finger, and laughed too.

“If you don't come down, I shall come up there after you,” said Mr. Linn.

“You can't catch me, if you do,” said Rodolphus.

Mr. Linn began to ascend the rocks. Rodolphus, however, who was, of
course, more nimble than his father, went on faster than his father could
follow. He passed over the highest portion, of the hill, and then clambered
down upon the other side, to the road. He crossed the road, and then began
climbing down the bank, toward the shore. He had often been up and down
that path before, and he accordingly descended very quick and very easily.

When he reached the shore, he went out to the flat rock, and there stopped
and turned round to look at his father. Mr. Linn was standing on the brink of
the cliff, preparing to come down.

“Stop,” said Rodolphus to his father. “If you come down, I will throw the
quarter of a dollar into the water.”

[pg 437]
So saying, Rodolphus extended his hand as if he were about to throw the
money off, into the stream.

The Pursuit.

Mrs. Linn and Annie had come out from the house, to see how Mr. Linn's
pursuit of the fugitive would end; but instead of following Rodolphus and
his father over the rocks, they had come across the road to the little gate,
where they could see the flat rock on which Rodolphus was standing, and his
father on the cliffs above. Mrs. Linn stood in the gateway. Annie had come
forward, and was standing in the path, at the head of the steps. When she
saw Rodolphus threatening to throw the money into the river, she seemed
very much concerned and distressed. She called out to her brother, in a very
earnest manner.

“Rodolphus! Rodolphus! That is my father's quarter of a dollar. You must not
throw it away.”

“I will throw it away,” said Rodolphus, “and I'll jump into the water myself,
in the deepest place that I can find, if he won't let me have it to buy my
rabbit with.”

“I would let him have it, husband,” said Mrs. Linn, “if he wants it so very
much. I don't care much about it, on the whole. I don't think the rabbit will
be any great trouble.”

When Rodolphus heard his mother say this, he considered the case as
decided, and he walked off from the flat rock to the shore, and from the
shore up the path to his mother. There was some further conversation
between Rodolphus and his parents in respect to the rabbit, but it was finally
concluded that the rabbit should be bought, and Rodolphus was allowed to
keep the quarter of a dollar accordingly.

Such was the way in which Rodolphus was brought up in his childhood. It is
not surprising that he came in the end to be a very bad boy.

II. Ellen.

The next morning after Rodolphus had obtained his quarter of a dollar in the
manner we have described, he proposed to Annie to go with him to buy his
rabbit. It would not be very far, he said.

“I should like to go very much,” said Annie, “if my mother will let me.”

“O, she will let you,” said Rodolphus, “I can get her to let you.”

Rodolphus waited till his father had gone away after breakfast, before asking
his mother to let Annie go with him. He was afraid that his father might
make some objection to the plan. After his father had gone, he went to ask
his mother.

At first she said very decidedly that Annie could not go.

“Why not?” asked Rodolphus.

“Oh, I could not trust her with you so far,” replied his mother, “she is too
little.”

There followed a long and earnest debate between Rodolphus and his
mother, which ended at last in her consent that Annie should go.

Rodolphus found a basket in the shed, which he took to bring his rabbit
home in. He put a cloth into the basket, and also a long piece of twine. The
cloth was to spread over the top of the basket, and the twine to tie round it,
in order to keep the rabbit in.

When Rodolphus was ready to go, his mother told him that she was afraid
that he might lose his quarter of a dollar on the way, and in order to make it
more secure, she proposed to tie it up for him in the corner of a pocket
handkerchief.

“Why, that would not do any good, mother,” said Rodolphus, “for then I
should only lose handkerchief and all.”

“No,” replied his mother. “You would not be so likely to lose the
handkerchief. The handkerchief could not be shaken out of your pocket so
easily, nor get out through any small hole. Besides, if you should by any
chance lose the money, you could find it again much more readily if it was
tied up in a handkerchief, that being so large and easily seen.”

So Mrs. Linn tied the money in the corner of a pocket handkerchief, and then
put the handkerchief itself in Rodolphus's pocket.

The place where Rodolphus lived was in Franconia, just below the village.
There was a bridge in the middle of the village with a dam across the stream
just above it. There were mills near the dam. Just below the dam the water
was very rapid.

Rodolphus walked along with Annie till he came to the bridge. On the way,
as soon as he got out of sight of the house, he pulled the handkerchief out of

his pocket, and began untying the knot.

“What are you going to do?” asked Annie.

“I am going to take the money out of this pocket handkerchief,” said
Rodolphus.

So saying he untied the knot, and when he had got the money out he put the
money itself in one [pg 438] pocket and the handkerchief in the other, and
then walked along again.

When Rodolphus reached the bridge he turned to go over it. Annie was at
first afraid to go over it. She wanted to go some other way.

“There is no other way,” said Rodolphus.

“Where is it that you are going to get the rabbit?” asked Annie.

“To Beechnut's,” said Rodolphus.

“Beechnut's,” repeated Annie, “that's a funny name.”

“Why, his real name is Antonio,” said Rodolphus. “But, come, walk along;
there is no danger in going over the bridge.”

Notwithstanding her brother's assurances that there was no danger, Annie
was very much afraid of the bridge. She however walked along, but she kept
as near the middle of the roadway as she could. Sometimes she came to wide
cracks in the floor of the bridge, through which she could see the water
foaming and tumbling over the rocks far below. There was a sort of
balustrade or railing each side of the bridge, but it was very open. Rodolphus
went to this railing and putting his head between the bars of it, looked down.

Annie begged him to come back. But he said he wished to look and see if
there were any fishes down there in the water. In the mean time Annie
walked along very carefully, taking long steps over the cracks, and choosing
her way with great caution. Presently she heard a noise behind her, and
looking round she saw a wagon coming. This frightened her more than ever.
So she began to run as fast as she could run, and very soon she got safely

across the bridge. When she reached the land, she went out to the side of the
road to let the wagon go by, and sat down there to wait for her brother.

Presently Rodolphus came. Annie left her seat and went back into the road to
meet him, and so they walked along together.

“If his name is truly Antonio,” said Annie, “why don't you call him
Antonio?”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Rodolphus, “the boys always call him Beechnut.”

“I mean to call him Antonio,” said Annie, “if I see him.”

“Well, you will see him,” said Rodolphus, “for we go right where he lives.”

“Where does he live?” asked Annie.

“He lives at Phonny's,” said Rodolphus.

“And where is Phonny's?” asked Annie.

“Oh, it is a house up here by the valley. Didn't you ever go there?”

“No,” said Annie.

“It is a very pleasant house,” said Rodolphus. “There is a river in front of it,
and a pier, and a boat. There is a boat-house, too. There used to be a little
girl there, too—just about as big as you.”

“What was her name?” asked Annie.

“Malleville,” replied Rodolphus.

“I have heard about Malleville,” said Annie.

“How did you hear about her?” asked Rodolphus.

“My sister Ellen told me about her,” said Annie.

“We can go and see Ellen,” said Rodolphus, “after we have got the rabbit.”

“Well,” said Annie, “I should like to go and see her very much.”

Rodolphus and Annie had a sister Ellen. She was two years older than
Rodolphus. Rodolphus was at this time about ten. Ellen was twelve. Antonio
was fourteen. Ellen did not live at home. She lived with her aunt. She went
to live with her aunt when she was about eight years old. Her aunt lived in a
small farm-house among the mountains, and when Ellen was about eight
years old, she was taken sick, and so Ellen went to the house to help take
care of her.

Ellen was a very quiet and still, and at the same time a very diligent and
capable girl. She was very useful to her aunt in her sickness. She took care
of the fire, and kept the room in order; and she set a little table very neatly at
the bedside, when her aunt got well enough to take food.

It was a long time before her aunt was well enough to leave her bed, and
then she could not sit up much, and she could not walk about at all. She
could only lie upon a sort of sofa, which her husband made for her in his
shop. So Ellen remained to take care of her from week to week, until at last
her aunt's house became her home altogether.

Ellen liked to live at her aunt's very much, for the house was quiet, and
orderly, and well-managed, and every thing went smoothly and pleasantly
there. At home, on the other hand, every thing was always in confusion, and
Rodolphus made so much noise and uproar, and encroached so much on the
peace and comfort of the family by his self-will and his domineering temper,
that Ellen was always uneasy and unhappy when she was at her mother's.
She liked to be at her aunt's, therefore, better; and as her aunt liked her, she
gradually came to make that her home. Rodolphus used frequently to go and
see her, and even Annie went sometimes.

Annie was very much pleased with the plan of going now to make Ellen a
visit. They walked quietly along the road, talking of this plan, when Annie
suddenly called out;

“Oh, Rodolphus, look there!”

Rodolphus looked, and saw a drove of cattle coming along the road. It was a
very large drove, and it filled up the road almost entirely.

“Who cares for that?” said Rodolphus.

Annie seemed to care for it very much. She ran out to the side of the road.

Rodolphus walked quietly after her, saying, “Don't be afraid, Annie. You can
climb up on the fence, if you like, till they get by.”

There was a large stump by the side of the fence, at the place where
Rodolphus and Annie approached it, and Rodolphus, running to it, said,
“Quick, Annie, quick! climb up on this stump.”

Rodolphus climbed up on the stump, and then helped Annie up after him.
They had, however, but just got their footing upon it, when Rodolphus
looked down at his feet and saw a hornet [pg 439] crawling out of a crevice
in the side of the stump. “Ah, Annie, Annie! a hornet's nest! a hornet's nest!”
exclaimed Rodolphus; “we must run.”

So saying, Rodolphus climbed down from the stump, on the side opposite to
where he had seen the hornet come out, and then helped Annie down.

“We must run across to the other side of the road,” said he.

So saying, he hurried back into the road again, leading Annie by the hand.
They found, however, that they were too late to gain the fence on the other
side, for several of the cattle had advanced along by the green bank on that
side so far that the fence was lined with them, and Rodolphus saw at a
glance, that he could not get near it.

“Never mind, Annie,” said Rodolphus, “we will stay here, right in the middle
of the road. Stand behind me, and I will keep the cattle off with my basket.”

So Annie took her stand behind Rodolphus, in the middle of the road, while
Rodolphus, by swinging his basket to and fro, toward the cattle as they came
on, made them separate to the right and left, and pass by on each side.
Rodolphus, besides waving his basket at the cattle, shouted to them in a very
stern and authoritative manner, saying, “Hie! Whoh! Hie-up, there! Ho!” The

cattle were slow to turn out—but they did turn out, just before they came to
where Rodolphus and Annie were standing—crowding and jamming each
other in great confusion. The herd closed together again as soon as they had
passed the children, so that for a time Rodolphus and Annie stood in a little
space in the road, with the monstrous oxen all around them.

At length the herd all passed safely by, and then Rodolphus and Annie went
on. After walking along a little farther, they came to the bank of a river. The
road lay along the bank of this river. There was a smooth sandy beach down
by the water. Rodolphus and Annie went down there a few minutes to ploy.
There was an old raft there. It was floating in the water, but was fastened by
a rope to a stake in the sand.

“Ah, here is a raft, Annie,” said Rodolphus. “I'll tell you what we will do.
We will go the rest of the way by water, on this raft. I'm tired of walking so
far.”

“Oh, no,” said Annie, “I'm afraid to go on that raft. It will sink.”

“O, no,” said Rodolphus, “it will not sink. See.” So saying, he stepped upon
the raft, to show Annie how stable it was.

“I'll get a block,” he continued, “for you to sit on.”

Annie was very much afraid of the raft, though she was not quite so much
afraid of it as she had been of the bridge, because the bridge was very high
up above the water, and there was, consequently as she imagined, danger of
a fall. Besides the water where the raft was lying, was smooth and still,
while that beneath the bridge was a roaring torrent. Finally, Annie allowed
herself to be persuaded to get upon the raft. Rodolphus found a block lying
upon the shore, and he put that upon the raft for Annie to sit upon. When
Annie was seated, Rodolphus stepped upon the raft himself, and with a long
pole he pushed it out from the shore, while Annie balanced herself as well as
she could upon the block.

The water was not very deep, and Rodolphus could push the raft along very
easily, by setting the end of his pole against the bottom Annie sat upon her
block very still. It happened, however, unfortunately, that the place where

Antonio lived was up the stream, not down, and Rodolphus found that
though he could move his raft very easily round and round, and even back
and forth, he could not get forward much on his way, on account of the force
of the current, which was strong against him. He advanced a little way,
however, and then he began to be tired of so difficult a navigation.

“I don't think we shall go very far, on the raft,” said he, to Annie, “there is
such a strong tide.”

Just then Rodolphus began to look very intently into the water before him.
He thought he saw a pickerel. He was just going to attempt to spear him with
his pole, when his attention was arrested by hearing Annie call out, “Oh,
Rolfy! Rolfy! the raft is all coming to pieces”

The Raft.

[pg 440]
Rodolphus looked round, and saw that the boards of which the raft had been
made, were separating from each other at the end of the raft where Annie
was sitting, and one of the boards was shooting out entirely.

“So it is,” said Rodolphus. “Why didn't they nail it together? You sit still,
and I will push in to the shore.”

Rodolphus attempted to push in to the shore, but in the strenuous efforts
which he made for that purpose, he stepped about upon the raft irregularly
and in such a manner, as to make the boards separate more and more. At
length the water began to come up around Annie's feet, and Rodolphus
alarmed at this, hurriedly directed her to stand up, on the block. Annie tried
to do so, but before she effected her purpose, the raft seemed evidently about
going to pieces. It had, however, by this time got very near the shore, so
Rodolphus changed his orders, and called out, “Jump, Annie, jump!”

Annie jumped; but the part of the raft on which she was standing gave way
under her feet, and she came down into the water. The water was not very
deep. It came up, however, almost to Annie's knees. Rodolphus himself had
leaped over to the shore, and so had, himself, escaped a wetting. He took
Annie by the hand, and led her also out to the dry land.

Annie began to cry. Rodolphus soothed and quieted her as well as he could.
He took off her stockings and shoes. He poured the water out of the shoes,
and wrung out the stockings. He also wrung out Annie's dress as far as
possible. He told her not to mind it; her clothes would soon get dry. It was all
the fault of the boys, he said, who made the raft, for not nailing it together.

Rodolphus had had presence of mind enough to seize his basket, when he
leaped ashore, so that that was safe. The raft, however, went all to pieces,
and the fragments of it floated away down the stream.

Rodolphus and Annie then resumed their journey. Rodolphus talked fast to
Annie, and told her a great many amusing stories, to divert her mind from
the misfortune which had happened to them. He charged her not to tell her
mother, when she got home, that she had been in the water, and made her
promise that she would not.

At length they came to a large house which stood back from the road a little
way, at the entrance to a valley. This was the house, Rodolphus said, where
Beechnut lived. Rodolphus opened a great gate, and he and Annie went into
the yard.

“I think that Beechnut is in some of the barns, or sheds, or somewhere,” said
Rodolphus.

So he and Annie went to the barns and sheds. There was a horse standing in
one of the sheds, harnessed to a wagon, but there were no signs of Beechnut.

“Perhaps he is in the yard,” said Rodolphus.

So Rodolphus led the way through a shed to a sort of back-yard, where there
was a plank-walk, with lilac-bushes and other shrubbery on one side of it.
Rodolphus and Annie walked along upon the planks. Presently, they came to
a place where there was a ladder standing up against the house.

“Ah!” said Rodolphus, “he is upon the house. Here is the ladder. I think he is
doing something on the house. I mean to go and see.”

“No,” said Annie, “you must not go up on such a high place.”

“Oh, this is not a very high ladder,” said Rodolphus. So saying he began to
go up. Annie stood below, looking up to him as he ascended, and feeling
great apprehension lest he should fall.

The top of the ladder reached up considerably above the top of the house,
and Rodolphus told Annie that he was not going to the top of the ladder, but
only high enough to see if Beechnut was on the house. He told her, too, that
if she walked back toward the garden gate, perhaps she could see too. Annie
accordingly walked back, and looking upward all the time, she presently saw
a young man who she supposed was Beechnut, doing something to the top of
one of the chimneys. By this time Rodolphus had reached the eaves of the
house, in climbing up the ladder, and he came in sight of Beechnut, too.

Up The Ladder.

“Hie-yo! Dolphin!” said Beechnut, “is that you!”

Beechnut often called Rodolphus, Dolphin.

“May I come up where you are?” said Rodolphus.

“No,” said Beechnut.

When Rodolphus heard this answer, he remained quietly where he was upon
the ladder.

“What are you doing?” said Rodolphus.

“Putting a wire netting over the chimney,” said Beechnut.

“What for!” asked Rodolphus.

[pg 441]
“To keep the chimney-swallows from getting in,” said Beechnut.

“Are you coming down pretty soon?” asked Rodolphus.

“Yes,” said Beechnut. “Go down the ladder and wait till I come.”

So Rodolphus went down the ladder again to Annie.

“What is the reason,” said Annie, “that you obey Beechnut so much better
than you do my father?”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Rodolphus. “He makes me, I suppose.”

It was true that Beechnut made Rodolphus obey him—that is, in all cases
where he was under any obligation to obey him. One day, when he first
became acquainted with Beechnut, he went out upon the pond in Beechnut's
boat. He wished to row, but Beechnut preferred that some other boy should
row, and directed Rodolphus to sit down upon one of the thwarts. Rodolphus
would not do this, but was determined to row, and he attempted to take away
one of the oars by force. Beechnut immediately turned the head of the boat
toward the shore, and when he reached the shore he directed four of the
strongest boys to put Rodolphus out upon the sand, and then when they had
done this he sailed away in the boat again. Rodolphus took up clubs and
stones, and began to throw them at the boat. Beechnut came back again, and
seizing Rodolphus, he tied his hands behind him with a strong cord. When
he was thus secured Beechnut said to him,

“Now, you may have your choice of two things. You may stay here till we
come back from our excursion, and then, if you seem pretty peaceable, I will

untie you. Or you may go home now, as you are, with your hands tied behind
you in disgrace.”

Rodolphus concluded to remain where he was; for he was well aware that if
he were to go home through the village with his hands tied behind him,
every body would know that the tying was one of Beechnut's punishments,
and that it had not been resorted to without good reason. Some of the boys
thought that after this occurrence Beechnut would not be willing to have
Rodolphus go with them again in the boat, but Beechnut said “Yes; he may
go with us whenever he pleases. I don't mind having a rebel on board at all. I
know exactly what to do with rebels.”

“But it is a great trouble,” said one of the boys, “to have them on board.”

“Not at all,” said Beechnut, “on the other hand it is a pleasure to me to
discipline them.”

Rodolphus very soon found that it was useless to resist Beechnut's will, in
any case where Beechnut had the right to control; and so he soon formed the
habit of obeying him. He liked Beechnut too, very much. He liked him in
fact, all the better, on account of his firmness and decision.

When Beechnut came down from the housetop, Rodolphus told him he had
come to get a rabbit, and at the same time held out the quarter of a dollar to
view.

“Where did you get the money?” said Beechnut.

“My father gave it to me,” said Rodolphus.

“No,” said Annie, very earnestly, “my father did not give it to you. You took
it away from him.”

“But he gave it to me afterward,” said Rodolphus.

Beechnut inquired what this meant, and Annie explained to him, as well as
she could, the manner in which Rodolphus had obtained his money.
Beechnut then said, that he would not take the quarter of a dollar. The money
was not honestly come by, he said. It was not voluntarily given to

Rodolphus, and therefore was not honestly his. “The money was stolen,”
said he, “and I will not have any stolen money for my rabbits. I would rather
give you a rabbit for nothing.”

This, Beechnut said finally, he would do. “I will give you a rabbit,” said he,
“for the present, and whenever you get a quarter of a dollar, which is
honestly your own, you may come and pay for it, if you please, and if not,
not. But don't bring me any money which is not truly your own. And carry
that quarter of a dollar back and give it to your father.”

So saying, Beechnut led the way, and Rodolphus and Annie followed him,
into one of the barns. They walked along a narrow passageway, between a
hay-mow on one side, and a row of stalls for cattle on the other. Then they
turned and passed through an open room, and finally came to a place which
Beechnut called a bay. Here there was a little pen, with a house in it, for the
rabbits, and a hole at one side where the rabbits could run in under the barn.
Beechnut called “Benny! Benny! Benny!” and immediately several rabbits
came running out from the hole.

“There,” said Beechnut, “which one will you have?”

The children began immediately to examine the different rabbits, and to talk
very fast and very eagerly about them. Finally, Rodolphus decided in favor
of a gray one, though there was one which was perfectly white, that Annie
seemed to prefer. Beechnut said that he would give Rodolphus the gray one.

“As to the white one,” said he, “I am going to let you take it, Annie, for
Ellen. I can't give it to you. I give it to Ellen; but, perhaps, she will let you
carry it home with you, and take care of it for her, and so keep it with
Rodolphus's.”

Annie seemed very much pleased with this plan, and so the two rabbits were
caught and put into the basket. The cloth was then tied over them, and
Rodolphus and Annie prepared to go away.

“But, stop,” said Beechnut, “I am going directly by your aunt's in my wagon,
and I can give you a ride.”

“Well,” said Annie, dancing about and clapping her hands. It was very
seldom that Annie had an opportunity to take a ride. [pg 442] She ran to the
wagon. Rodolphus followed her slowly, carrying the basket. Beechnut
helped in the two children, and then got in himself, and took his seat
between them. Rodolphus held the basket between his knees, peeping in
under the cloth, now and then, to see if the rabbits were safe.

The Yard at Mr. Randon's.

The party traveled on by a winding and very pleasant road among the
mountains, for about a mile, and at length they drove up to the door of a

pleasant little farm-house in a sort of dell. There was a high hill behind it—
overhung with forest trees. There was a spacious yard at the end of the
house, with ducks, and geese, and chickens, in the back part of it. There was
a large dog lying asleep on the great flat stone step when the wagon came
up, but when he heard the wagon coming, awoke, opened his eyes, got up,
and walked away. There was a well in the middle of the yard. Beechnut rode
round the well, and drove up to the door. Ellen was sitting at the window. As
soon as she saw the wagon, she got up and ran to the door.

“How do you do, Ellen!” said Beechnut.

“How do you do, Antonio!” said Ellen, “I am much obliged to you for
bringing my brother and sister to see me.”

So saying, she came to the wagon and helped Annie out. Rodolphus, who
was on the other side of Beechnut, then handed her his basket, saying,
“Here, Ellen, take this very carefully. There are two rabbits in it, and one of
them is for you.”

“For me,” said Ellen.

“Yes,” said Annie, “only I am to take care of it for you.”

“Good-by,” said Beechnut. He was just beginning, as he said this, to drive
the wagon away.

“Good-by, Beechnut,” said Rodolphus.

“I am much obliged to you for my ride,” said Annie.

“Stop a minute, Antonio,” said Ellen, “I have got something for you.”

So saying, Ellen went into the house and brought out a small flat parcel,
neatly put up and addressed on the outside, Antonio.

She took it out to the wagon, and handed it up to Antonio, saying that there
were the last drawings that he had lent her. In fact, Ellen was one of
Beechnut's pupils in drawing. He was accustomed to lend her models,
which, when she had copied them, she sent back to him. Ellen was one of

Antonio's favorite pupils; she was so faithful, and patient, and persevering.
Besides, she was a very beautiful girl.

“I must not stop to see your copies now,” said Antonio, “but I shall come
again pretty soon. Good-by.”

“Good-by,” said Ellen: and then she went back to the door where Rodolphus
and Annie were standing.

Rodolphus lifted up the corner of the cloth, which covered the basket, and let
Ellen see the rabbits. Ellen was very much pleased to find that one of them
was hers. She said that she would put a collar on its neck, as a mark that it
was hers, and she asked Rodolphus and Annie to go in with her into the
house, where she said she would get the collar.

So they all went in. The room was a very pleasant room, indeed. It was large
and it was in perfect order. There was a very spacious fire-place in it, but
scarcely any fire. As it was summer, no fire was necessary. At one side of the
room, near a window, there was a table, which Ellen said was her table.
There were two drawers in this table. These drawers contained books, and
papers, and various articles of apparatus for writing and drawing. In one
corner of one of the drawers there was a little paint box.

There was a small bedroom adjoining the room where the children were.
They all pretty soon heard a voice calling from this room, in a pleasant tone,
“Ellen, bring the children in here.”

“Yes; come Rolfy,” said Ellen—“and Annie—come and see aunt.” So all the
children went into their aunt's room.

They found her half-sitting and half-lying upon her sofa, by a pleasant
window, which looked out upon a green yard and upon an orchard which
was beyond the yard. She was sewing. She looked pale, but she seemed
contented and happy—and she said that she was very glad to see Rodolphus
and Annie. She talked with them some time, and then asked Ellen to get
them some luncheon. Ellen accordingly went into the other room and set the
table for luncheon, by her window as she called it. This window was a very
pleasant one, near her table. The luncheon consisted [pg 443] of a pie, some

cake, warm from the oven, and some baked apples, and cream. Ellen said
that she made the cake, and the pie, and baked the apples herself.

The children ate their luncheon together very happily, and then spent some
time in walking about the yards, the barns, and the garden, to see what was
to be seen. Rodolphus walked about quietly and behaved well. In fact, he
was always a good boy at his aunt's, and obeyed all her directions—she
would not allow him to do otherwise.

At length Rodolphus and Annie set out on their return home. It was a long
walk, but in due time they reached home in safety. Rodolphus determined
not to give the money back to his father, and so he hid it in a crevice, which
he found in a part of the fence behind his rabbit house. He put the rabbits in
their house, and put a board up before the door to keep them in.

That night when Mrs. Linn took off Annie's stockings by the kitchen fire,
when she was going to put her to bed, she found them very damp.

“Why, Annie,” she said, “what makes your stockings so damp? You must
have got into the water somewhere to-day.”

Annie did not answer. Rodolphus had enjoined it upon her not to tell their
mother of their adventure on the raft, and so she did not know what to say.

“Damp?” said Rodolphus. “Are they damp? Let me feel.” So he began to
feel of Annie's stockings.

“No,” said he, “they are not damp. I can't feel that they are damp.”

“They certainly are,” said his mother. “They are very damp indeed.”

“Then,” said Rodolphus, “we must have spilled some water into them when
we were getting a drink, Annie, at the well.” Annie said nothing, and Mrs.
Linn hung the stockings up to dry.

III. Sickness.

Ellen's aunt was the sister of Mr. Linn, Ellen's father; and her name was
Anne. Ellen used to call her Aunt Anne. Her husband's name was Randon, so
that sometimes Ellen called her Aunt Randon.

Though Mr. Randon's house appeared rather small, as seen from the road by
any one riding by, it was pretty spacious and very comfortable within. Mr.
Randon owned several farms in different places, and he was away from
home a great deal attending to his other farms and to the flocks of sheep and
herds of cattle which he had upon them. During these absences Mrs. Randon
of course remained at home with Ellen. There was a girl named Martha who
lived at the house to do the work of the family, and also a young man named
Hugh. Hugh was employed in the mornings and evenings in taking care of
the barns and the cattle, and in the day-time, especially in the winter, he
hauled wood—sometimes to the house for the family to burn, and sometimes
to the village for sale.

The family lived thus very happily together, whether Mr. Randon was at
home or away. Mrs. Randon could not walk about the house at all, but was,
on the other hand, confined all day to her bed or her sofa; but she knew
every thing that was done; and gave directions about every thing. Ellen was
employed as messenger to carry her aunt's directions out, and to bring back
intelligence and answers. Mrs. Randon knew exactly what was in every
room, and where it was in the room. She knew what was in every drawer,
and what was on every shelf in every closet, and what and how much was in
every bin in the cellar. So that if she wanted any thing she could direct Ellen
where to go to get it with a certainty that it would be exactly there. The
house was very full of furniture, stores, and supplies, and all was so well
arranged and in such an orderly and complete condition, that in going over it
every room that the visitor entered seemed pleasanter than the one seen
before.

On one occasion, Rodolphus himself had proof of this admirable order. He
had cut his finger, in the shed, and when he came in, Mrs. Randon, after
binding it up very nicely, turned to Ellen, and said,

“Now, Ellen, we must have a cot. Go up into the garret, and open the third
trunk, counting from the west window. In the right-hand front corner of this

trunk you will find a small box. In the box you will find three cots. Bring the
smallest one to me.”

Ellen went and found every thing as Mrs. Randon had described it.

There was a room in the front part of the house called the Front Room,
which was usually kept shut up. It was furnished as a parlor very prettily. It
had very full curtains to the windows, a soft carpet on the floor, and a rug
before the fire-place. There was a bookcase in this room, with a desk below.
Mr. Randon kept his valuable papers in this desk, and the book-case above
was filled with interesting books. There were several very pretty pictures on
the walls of this room, and some curious ornaments on the mantle shelf. The
blinds of the windows in this apartment were generally closed and the
curtains drawn, and Ellen seldom went into it, except to get a new book to
read to her aunt, out of the secretary.

The room which the family generally used, was a back room. It was quite
large, and it had a very spacious fire-place in it. Being larger than any other
room in the house it was generally called the Great Room. The windows of
this room looked out upon a pretty green yard, with a garden and an orchard
beyond. There was a door too at one end of the room opening to a porch. In
this porch was an outer door, which led to a large yard at the end of the
house. This was the door that Antonio had driven up to, when he brought
Rodolphus and Annie to see Ellen. On the other side of the kitchen from the
porch-door, was a door leading to Mrs. Randon's bed-room. The situation of
these rooms, and of the other apartments of the house as well as of the
principal articles of furniture hereafter [pg 444] to be described, may be
perfectly understood by the means of the following plan.

Plan of Mrs. Randon's House. B: Bed
in Mrs Randon's bed-room. W: The
closed windows. B. E.: Back entry. pl:
Back Platform. P: Porch. C: Mrs.
Randon's couch or sofa. ff: Fire-
places. H: Hugh's seat. S: Settle. L:
Lutie's bed.

Mrs. Randon was accustomed to remain in her bedroom almost all the time
in the summer, but in the winter she had her sofa or couch brought out and
placed by the side of the fire-place in the great room, as represented in the
plan. Here, in the long stormy evenings of winter, the family would live
together very happily. Mrs. Randon would lie reclining upon her sofa,
knitting, and talking to Martha and Ellen while they were getting supper

ready. Ellen would set the table, while Martha would bake the cakes and
bring up the milk out of the cellar, and make the tea; and then when all was
ready, they would move the table up close to Mrs. Randon's sofa, and after
lifting her up and supporting her with pillows at her back, they would
themselves sit down on the other side of the table, and all eat their supper
together in a very happy manner.

The Great Room.

Then, after supper, when the table had been put away, and a fresh fire had
been made on the great stone hearth, Ellen would sit in a little rocking-chair
by her aunt's side, and read aloud some interesting story, while Martha sat
knitting on the settle, at the other side of the fire, and Hugh, on a bench in
the corner, occupied himself with making clothes-pins, or shaping teeth for
rakes, or fitting handles into tools, or some other work of that kind. Hugh

found that unless he had such work to do, he always fell asleep while Ellen
was reading.

Ellen found that her aunt, instead of growing better, rather grew worse. She
was very pale, though very delicate and beautiful. Her fingers were very
long, and white, and tapering. Ellen thought that they grew longer and more
tapering every day. At last, one winter evening, just after tea, and before
Hugh and Martha had come in to sit down, Ellen went up to the sofa, and
kneeling down upon a little bear-skin rug which was there, and which had
been put there to look warm and comfortable, although the poor invalid
could never put her feet upon it, she bent down over her aunt and said,

“It seems to me Aunt Anne, that you don't get better very fast.”

The patient, putting her arm over Ellen's neck, and drawing Ellen down
closely to her, kissed her, but did not answer.

“Do you think you shall ever get well, aunty?” said Ellen.

“No,” said her aunt, “I do not think that I shall. I think that before a great
while I shall die.”

“Why, aunty!” said Ellen. She was much shocked to hear such a declaration.
“I hope you will not die,” she continued presently, speaking in a very low
and solemn manner. “What shall I do if you should die!—What makes you
think that you will die?”

“There are two reasons why I think that I shall die,” said her aunt. “One is,
that I feel that I am growing weaker and weaker all the time. I have grown a
great deal weaker within a few days.”

“Have you?” said Ellen, in a tone of great anxiety and concern.

“Yes,” said her aunt. “The other reason that makes me think that I am going
to die is greater still; and that is I begin to feel so willing to die.”

“I thought that you were always willing to die,” said Ellen. “I thought we
ought to be all willing to die, always.”

“No,” said her aunt, “or yes, in [pg 445] one sense we ought. We ought
always to be willing to submit to whatever God shall think best for us. But
as to life and death, we ought undoubtedly, when we are strong and well, to
desire to live.”

“God means,” she continued, “that we should desire to live, and that we
should do all that we can to prolong life. He has given us an instinct
impelling us to that feeling. But when sickness comes and death is nigh, then
the instinct changes. We do not wish to live then—that is, if we feel that we
are prepared to die. It is a very kind and merciful arrangement to have the
instinct change, so that when we are well, we can be happy in the thought of
living, and when we are sick and about to die, we can be happy in the
thought of dying. Our instincts often change thus, when the circumstances
change.”

“Do they?” said Ellen, thoughtfully.

“Yes,” said her aunt. “For instance, when you were an infant, your mother's
instinctive love for you led her to wish to have you always near her, with
your cheek upon her cheek, and your little hand in her bosom. Mothers all
have such an instinct as that, while their children are very young. It is given
to them so that they may love to have their children very near them while
they are so young and tender that they would not be safe if they were away.

“But now,” she continued, “you have grown older, and the instinct has
changed. Your mother loves you just as much as she did when you were an
infant, but she loves you in a different way. She is willing to have you absent
from her, if you are only well provided for and happy.”

“And is it so with death?” asked Ellen.

“Yes,” replied her aunt; “when we are well, we love life, and we ought to
love it. It then seems terrible to die. God means that it should seem terrible
to us then. But when sickness comes and we are about to die, then he
changes the feeling. Death seems terrible no more. We become perfectly
willing to die.”

Here Mrs. Randon paused, and Ellen remained still, thinking of what she had
heard, but without speaking. After a few minutes her aunt continued.

“I have had a great change in my feelings within a short time, about dying,”
said she, “I have always, heretofore, desired to live and to get well; and it
has seemed to me a terrible thing to die;—to leave my pleasant home, and
my husband, and my dear Ellen, and to see them no more. But somehow or
other, lately, all this is changed. I feel now perfectly willing to die. It does
not seem terrible at all. I have been a great sinner all my days, but I feel sure
that my sins are forgiven for Christ's sake, and that if I die I shall be happy
where I go, and that I shall see my husband and you too there some day.”

Ellen laid her head down by the side of her aunt's, with her face to the pillow
and her cheek against her aunt's cheek, but said nothing.

“When I am gone,” continued her aunt, “you will go home and live with
your mother again.”

“Shall I?” said Ellen, faintly.

“Yes,” replied her aunt, “it will be better that you should. You can do a great
deal of good there. You can gradually get the house in order, taking one thing
at a time, and so not only help your mother, but make it more pleasant and
comfortable for your father. You can also teach Annie, and be a great help to
her as she grows up; and you can also perhaps do a great deal of good to
Rodolphus.”

“I don't know what I shall do with Rodolphus,” said Ellen. “He troubles my
mother very much indeed.”

“I know he does,” said her aunt, “but then you will soon get a great influence
over him, and it is possible that you will succeed in making him a good
boy.”

As Mrs. Randon said this, Ellen heard the sound of a door opening in the
back entry, and a stamping of feet upon the floor, as if some one were
coming in out of the snow.

“There comes Hugh,” said Ellen, “and I think there is going to be a storm.”

Signs of a gathering storm had in fact been appearing all that day. For
several days before, the weather had been very clear and cold, but that
morning the cold had diminished, and a thin haze had gradually extended
itself over the sky. At sunset the sky looked thick and murky toward the
southeast, and it became dark much sooner than usual. A moment after Ellen
had spoken, Hugh came in. He said that it was snowing, and that two or
three inches of snow had already fallen; and that if it snowed much during
the night he should not be able to go into the woods the next morning.

When Ellen rose the next morning and looked at the windows, she saw that
the snow was piled up against the panes of glass on the outside, and on going
to the window to look out, she found that it was snowing still, and that all
the old snow and all the roads and tracks upon it, were entirely covered.
Ellen went out into the great room, and there she found a blazing fire in the
fireplace, and Martha before it getting breakfast ready. Pretty soon Hugh
came in.

“What a great snow-storm,” said Ellen.

“No,” said Hugh, “it is not a very great snow-storm. It does not snow very
fast.”

“Can you go into the woods to-day?” said Ellen.

“Yes,” said Hugh, “I am going into the woods for a load of wood to haul to
the village. The snow is not very deep yet.”

Hugh went to the woods, got his load, hauled it to the village, and returned
to dinner. After dinner he went again. Ellen was almost afraid to have him go
away in the afternoon, for her aunt appeared to be more and more unwell.
She lay upon her sofa by the side of the fire, silent and still, apparently
without pain, but very faint and feeble. She spoke very seldom, and then
only in a whisper. At one time about the middle of the afternoon, Ellen went
and stood a moment at the window to see the snow driving by—blown by
the wind along the crests of the drifts, and over the walls, down the road.
When she turned round, she saw that her aunt was [pg 446] beckoning to her
with her white and slender finger. Ellen went immediately to her.

“Is Hugh going to the village this afternoon?” she asked.

“Yes, aunt,” said Ellen, “I believe he is.”

“I wish you would ask him to call at my brother George's, and tell him that I
am very sick, and ask him if he can not come up and see me this evening.”

“Yes, aunt,” said Ellen, “I will.”

Ellen accordingly watched for Hugh when he came down the mountain-road
with the load of wood, on the way to the village. She gave him the message,
standing at the stoop-door. The wind howled mournfully over the trees of the
forest, and the air was thick with falling and driving snow. Hugh said that he
had almost concluded not to go to the village. The snow had become so
deep, and the storm was increasing so fast, that he doubted very much
whether he could get back if he should go. On receiving Ellen's message,
however, he decided at once to go on. He could get to the village well
enough, he said, for it was a descending road all the way; but there would be
more uncertainty about the return.

So he started his four oxen again, and they went wallowing on, followed by
the great loaded sled, with the runners buried in the drift. Hugh's cap and
shaggy coat, and the handkerchief which he had tied about the collar of his
coat, after turning it up to cover his ears, were all whitened with the snow,
and from among all these various mufflings his face, reddened with the cold,
peeped out, though almost wholly concealed from view.

As soon as Hugh was gone, Ellen, who was by this time almost blinded by
the snow which the wind blew furiously into her face and eyes, came into
the house and shut the door.

Ellen watched very diligently all the afternoon for the coming of her father.
She hoped that he would bring her mother with him. She went to the window
again and again, and looked anxiously down the road, but nothing was to be
seen but the thick and murky atmosphere, the increasing drifts, and the
scudding wreaths of snow. The fences and the walls gradually disappeared
from view; the great wood pile in the yard was soon completely covered and
concealed; and a deep drift, of the form of a wave just curling over to break

upon the shore, slowly rose directly across the entrance to the yard, until it
was higher than the posts on each side of the gateway, so that Ellen began to
fear that if her father and mother should come, they would not be able to get
into the yard.

At length it gradually grew dark, and then, though Ellen went to the window
as often as before, and attempted to shade her eyes from the reflection of the
fire, by holding up her hands to the side of her face, she could watch these
changes no longer. Nothing was to be seen, but the trickling of the flakes
down the panes of glass on the outside, and a small expanse of white
immediately below the window.

In the mean time, within the room where Ellen's aunt was reposing, all
seemed, at least in appearance, very bright and cheerful. A great log was
lying across the andirons, behind and beneath which there was a blazing and
glowing fire. There was a tin baker before this fire, with a pan of large
apples in it, which Martha was baking, to furnish the table with, for the
expected company. Martha herself was busy at a side-table too, making
cakes for supper. The tea-kettle was in a corner, with a column of steam
rising gently from the spout, and Ellen's little gray kitten, Lutie, was in the
other corner asleep. Ellen herself was busy, here and there, about the room.
She went often to the window, even after it was too dark to see, and she
watched her aunt continually with a countenance expressive of much
affection and concern. Her aunt lay perfectly quiet and still, as if she were
asleep, only she would now and then open her eyes and smile upon Ellen, if
she saw Ellen looking at her, and then close them again.

The couch that she was lying upon had little wheels at the four corners of it
toward the floor, so that it could be moved to and fro. Ellen had been
accustomed, when the time arrived for her aunt to go to bed, to ask Martha
to help her move the couch into the bedroom, by the side of the bed, and
then assist her in moving the patient from one to the other. Ellen,
accordingly, about an hour after it became dark, went to her aunt's couch,
and asked her in a gentle tone if she would not like to go to bed. But her aunt
said no. She would not be moved, she said, but would remain as she was
until her brother should come. She said, too, that Martha and Ellen might eat
their supper when it was ready, and leave her where she was.

Martha and Ellen finished their supper about seven o'clock. Martha then
took her place upon the settle with her knitting-work as usual, and Ellen
went and sat down upon the little bear-skin rug, and leaned her head toward
her aunt. Her aunt put out her hand toward Ellen's cheek and pressed her
head gently down upon the pillow, by the side of her own, and then very
slowly and feebly moved her fingers, once or twice, down the hair on Ellen's
temple, as if she were pleased to have her little niece lying near her. Ellen
shut her eyes, and for a few minutes enjoyed very much the thought that she
was such an object of affection to one whom she loved so much; but after a
few minutes, she began to lose her consciousness, and soon fell fast asleep.

She slept more than an hour. It was in fact nearly half-past eight when she
awoke. She raised her head and looked up. She found that Martha had fallen
asleep too. Her knitting-work had dropped from her hand. Ellen did not wish
to disturb her, so she rose softly, went to the fire, and put up a brand which
had fallen down, and then crossed the room to the window, parted the
curtains, and putting her face close to the glass, attempted to look out.
Nothing was to be seen. She listened. Nothing was to be heard but the
dreadful roaring of the wind, and [pg 447] the clicking of the snow-flakes
against the windows.

Ellen came back to the couch again, and looked at her aunt as she lay with
her cheek upon her pillow, apparently asleep. At first Ellen thought that she
was really asleep, but when she came near, she found that her eyes were not
entirely closed. She kneeled down by the side of the couch and said gently,
“Aunt Anne, Aunt Anne, how do you feel now?”

Ellen saw that her aunt moved a little, and she heard a faint whispering
sound, but there was no audible answer.

Ellen was now frightened. She feared that her aunt might be dying. She went
to Martha and woke her. Martha started up much alarmed. Ellen told her that
she was afraid that her aunt was dying. Martha went to the couch. She
thought so too.

“I must go,” said she, “to some of the neighbors and get them to come.”

“But you can not get to any of the neighbors,” said Ellen.

“Perhaps I can,” said Martha, “and at any rate I must try.”

So Martha began to prepare herself, as well as she could, to go out into the
storm, Ellen standing by, full of apprehension and anxiety, and helping her
so far as she was able to do so. There was a neighbor who lived about a
quarter of a mile from the house, by a road which lay through the woods,
and which was, therefore, ordinarily not very much obstructed with the
snow. It was to this house that Martha was going to attempt to make her way.
When she was ready, she went forth, leaving Ellen with her aunt alone.

(To Be Continued.)

Recollections Of St. Petersburg.

“To-morr punkt at 'leven wir schiff for St. Petersburg,” was the polyglot
announcement by which all of us, Swedes, Germans, English, and one
solitary American, were given to understand at what hour on the ensuing day
we were to commence our voyage from Stockholm for the Russian capital.
With praiseworthy punctuality the steam was up at the appointed hour of
eleven, and as our steamer shot out into the Baltic we took our farewell view
of Stockholm, the “City of Piles.” As we steamed northward we dashed
through archipelago after archipelago of islands, some with bold and rocky
shores, and others sloping greenly down to the tranquil sea. Having passed
the Aland Islands, one of which, not thirty miles from the coast of Sweden,
has been seized and strongly fortified by her powerful and unscrupulous
neighbor, we turned into a narrow inlet, and touched Russian soil at Abo, the
ancient capital of Finland.

Here we made our first acquaintance with those fascinating gentry, whom his
Imperial Majesty deputes to watch that nothing treasonable or contraband
finds entrance into his dominions. Our intercourse here was, however, brief,
our passports merely being demanded, and permission granted us to go on

shore while the steamer was detained. At Cronstadt and St. Petersburg we
formed a more intimate if not more agreeable acquaintance with these
functionaries. Setting out again we coasted eastward up the Gulf of Finland,
passing the grim fortress of Sveaborg, with its eight hundred guns, and
garrison of fifteen thousand men, and shot up the beautiful bay to
Helsingfors, one of the great naval stations of Russia. Touching at Revel, on
the opposite shore of the Gulf of Finland, we ran due east up the Gulf,
encountering the great Russian summer fleet, which was performing its
annual manœuvres, and on the morning after leaving Helsingfors came in
sight of the shipping and fortifications of Cronstadt. As we crept slowly up
the narrow and winding channel, by which alone the harbor can be reached,
and passed successively the grim lines of batteries which command every
portion of it, we were forced to confess that it formed a fitting outpost to a
great military power.

Cronstadt is not only the chief naval dépôt of Russia, but is properly the port
of St. Petersburg, as the capital is inaccessible to vessels drawing more than
eight or nine feet of water. Hence Cronstadt is included in the St. Petersburg
customs-district, and vessels clear indifferently for either, and are subject to
only a single customs-house examination. It forms the key to the capital,
which would be entirely at the mercy of any fleet which should once pass its
batteries. It has therefore been fortified so strongly as to be apparently
impregnable to all the navies of the world. We came to anchor under the
guns of the fortress; and were soon put under the charge of our amiable
friends of the custom-house, who took complete possession of the deck,
while the passengers and officers of the vessel were directed to repair to the
cabin to give an account of themselves, their occupations, pursuits, and
designs to these rude and filthy representatives of the Czar. It was well for us
that we had been in a measure hardened to these annoyances by our previous
Continental experiences. Police and custom-house functionaries are nowhere
famous for civility, but the rudest and most unendurable specimens of that
class whom it has ever been my fortune to encounter are the lower orders of
the Russian officials. We could, however, congratulate ourselves that the
infliction was light in comparison to what it would have been had we
proceeded by land from Abo. There trunks, pockets, and pocket-books are
liable to repeated searches at different stations along the route. We were told
of travelers who had their boxes of tooth-powder carefully emptied, and their
soap-balls cut in two, in quest of something treasonable or contraband.

But there is an end to all things human, even to Russian police-examinations.
Our passports were luckily all in order, and as our steamer was cleared for
St. Petersburg we escaped the vexations attendant upon an inspection of
luggage and a change of vessel. Every thing was put under seal, even to an
ancient umbrella which [pg 448] had borne the brunt of many a shower in
half the countries of Europe, to say nothing of storms it had weathered
previous to its transatlantic voyage.

After our seven hours' detention, we found ourselves at last steaming up the
transparent Neva, and straining our eyes to get a first view of the City of
Peter. After something more than an hour's paddling against the rapid current
of the river, the gilt dome of the Cathedral first caught the eye, followed by
the sight of dome after dome, tower upon tower, spire after spire, gilt and
spangled with azure stars, long before the flat roofs and walls of the city
were visible.

No sooner had our steamer touched the granite quai than it was taken
possession of by a horde of custom-house and police officers, a shade or two
less filthy and disgusting than their Cronstadt brethren; for it is a noticeable
fact, the higher you proceed in official grade, the more endurable do the
Russian officials become, till you reach the heads of the departments, who
are as civil and well-behaved a body of functionaries as ever clasped fingers
upon a bribe. A few copecks or rubles, as the case may require, insinuated
into the expectant palms of the searching officials have a wonderful
tendency to abate the rigor of the examinations, which being completed, and
a silver ruble paid to the officer in attendance, the traveler is at liberty to go
on shore in search of a hotel or lodgings.

The instructed traveler will resist the seductions of the Russian hotels, with
their magnificent fronts, and Russian, German, and French signboards; for
once past the portals he will find that the noble staircases and broad passages
are filthy beyond all western imagination; and the damask curtains and
velvet sofas are perfect parks for all those “small deer” who make day and
night hideous. If he be wise, he will make his way to some boarding-house
upon the Quai Anglais, conducted by an emigrant from some country where
the primitive faith in the virtues of dusters and soap and water is cherished.

No sooner is the stranger established than he must take an interpreter, and
make the best of his way to the police office, to get a permit of residence.
This he obtains after an interrogation from a very civil functionary, to whom
must be paid a proportionate fee. But this permit is good only for the capital
and its immediate vicinity. If the Russians are slow to welcome the coming,
they are none the more ready to speed the parting guest. Mr. Smith and his
friend Brown must not leave the capital till they have published an
advertisement announcing their intention in three successive numbers of the
Gazette, an operation which consumes a space of from a week to ten days.

These preliminaries duly attended to, we were at liberty to commence our
examination of St. Petersburg. The traveler who first sees the city under a
summer sun is always struck with amazement. Its public places are so vast,
its monuments so numerous and imposing, its quays so magnificent, and its
edifices, public and private, so enormous, and constructed apparently of
materials so massive and enduring, that he is ready to pronounce it the most
magnificent city upon earth.

A century and a half ago the low marshy shores of the Neva, and the islands
formed by the branches into which it separates just before it empties itself
into the Gulf of Finland were inhabited only by a few scattered Finnish
fishermen. But commanding the entrance to Lake Ladoga, it was a military
position of some importance, and the Swedes had long maintained there a
fortress, the possession of which had been often unavailingly contested by
the Russians, up to 1703, when Peter the Great made himself master of it. He
determined to found upon this desolate spot the future capital of his vast
empire, and at once commenced the task, without waiting for peace to
confirm the possession of the site. He assembled a vast number of the
peasantry from every quarter of his empire, and pushed forward the work
with the energy of an iron will armed with absolute power. The surrounding
country, ravaged by long years of war, could furnish no supplies for these
enormous masses, and the convoys which brought them across Lake Ladoga
were frequently detained by contrary winds. Ill fed and worse lodged,
laboring in the cold and wet, multitudes yielded to the hardships, and the
foundations of the new metropolis were laid at the cost of a hundred
thousand lives, sacrificed in less than six months.

With Peter to will was to perform; he willed that a capital city should be
built and inhabited, and built and inhabited it was. In April, 1714, a ukase
was issued directing that all buildings should be erected in a particular
manner; another, three months later, ordered a large number of nobles and
merchants to erect dwellings in the new city. In a few months more another
ukase prohibited the erection of any stone mansion in any other portion of
the empire, while the enterprise of the capital was in progress; and that the
lack of building materials should be no obstacle, every vessel, whether large
or small, and every peasant's car which came to the city, was ordered to
bring a certain specified number of building stones. The work undertaken
with such rigid determination, and carried on with such remorseless vigor by
Peter, was continued in the same unflinching spirit by his successors; and the
result was the present St. Petersburg, with its aspect more imposing than that
of any other city on the globe, but bearing in its bosom the elements of its
own destruction, the moment it is freed from the control of the iron will,
which created and now maintains it:—a fitting type and representative of the
Russian Empire.

The whole enterprise of founding and maintaining St. Petersburg was and is
a struggle against nature. The soil is a marsh so deep and spongy that a solid
foundation can be attained only by constructing a subterranean scaffolding
of piles. Were it not for these the city would sink into the marsh like a stage
ghost through the trap-door. Every building of any magnitude [pg 449] rests
on piles; the granite quays which line the Neva rest on piles. The very foot-
pavements can not be laid upon the ground, but must be supported by piles.
A great commercial city is maintained, the harbor of which is as inaccessible
to ships, for six months in the year, as the centre of the desert of Sahara. In
the neighboring country no part produces any thing for human sustenance
save the Neva, which furnishes ice and fish. The severity of the climate is
most destructive to the erections of human hands; and St. Petersburg,
notwithstanding its gay summer appearance, when it emerges from the
winter frosts, resembles a superannuated belle at the close of the fashionable
season; and can only be put in proper visiting order by the assiduous services
of hosts of painters and plasterers. Leave the capital for a half century to the
unrepaired ravages of its wintry climate, and it would need a Layard to
unearth its monuments.

But sure as are the wasting inroads of time and the climate, St Petersburg is
in daily peril of an overthrow whose accomplishment would require but a
few hours. The Gulf of Finland forms a vast funnel pointing eastward, at the
extremity of which stands the city. No portion of the city is fifteen feet above
the ordinary level of the water. A strong westerly wind, blowing directly into
the mouth of the funnel, piles the water up so as to lay the lower part of the
city under water. Water is as much dreaded here, and as many precautions
are taken against it, as in the case of fire in other cities. In other cities alarm-
signals announce a conflagration; here they give notice of an inundation. The
firing of an alarm-gun from the Admiralty, at intervals of an hour, denotes
that the lower extremes of the islands are under water, when flags are hung
out from the steeples to give warning of danger. When the water reaches the
streets, alarm-guns are fired every quarter of an hour. As the water rises the
alarms grow more and more frequent, until minute-guns summon boats to
the assistance of the drowning population.

[pg 450]
So much for the lower jaw of the monster that lies in wait for the Russian
capital; now for the upper:—Lake Ladoga, which discharges its waters
through the Neva, is frozen over to an enormous thickness during the long
winter. The rapid northern spring raises its waters and loosens the ice
simultaneously; when the waters of the Gulf are at their usual level, the
accumulated ice and water find an easy outlet down the broad and rapid
Neva. But let a strong west wind heap up the waters of the Gulf just as the
breaking up of Lake Ladoga takes place, and the waters from above and
from below would suffice to inundate the whole city, while all its palaces,
monuments, and temples would be crushed between the masses of ice, like
“Captain Ahab's” boat in the ivory jaws of “Moby Dick.” Nothing is more
probable than such a coincidence. It often blows from the west for days
together in the spring; and it is almost a matter of certainty that the ice will
break up between the middle and the end of April. Let but a westerly storm
arise on the fatal day of that brief fortnight, and farewell to the City of the
Czars. Any steamer that bridges the Atlantic may be freighted with the
tidings that St. Petersburg has sunk deeper than plummet can sound in the
Finnish marshes from which it has so magically risen.

The Inundation of 1824.

Nor is this merely a matter of theory and speculation. Terrible inundations,
involving enormous destruction of life and property have occurred. The most
destructive of these took place on the 17th of November, 1824. A strong west
wind heaped the waters of the Gulf up into the narrow funnel of the Neva,
and poured them, slowly at first, along the streets. As night began to close in
the rise of the waters became more and more rapid. Cataracts poured into
doors, windows, and cellars. The sewers spouted up columns, like whales in
the death-agony. The streets were filled with abandoned equipages, and

deserted horses struggling in the rising waters. The trees in the public
squares were crowded with those who had climbed them for refuge. During
the night the wind abated, and the waters receded. But the pecuniary damage
of that one night is estimated at twenty millions of dollars, and the loss of
lives at eight thousand. All through the city a painted line traced upon the
walls designates the height to which the waters reached. Were ever house-
painters before engaged upon a task so ghastly? But suppose that, instead of
November, April had been written as the date of this inundation, when the
waters from the Lake above had met those from the Gulf below; St.
Petersburg would have been numbered among the things that were—Ilium
fuit.

Nothing of the kind can be more imposing than the view of St. Petersburg
from the tower of the Admiralty upon some bright June day, such as that on
which I first beheld it from that post. Under foot, as it seemed, from the
galleries, lay the Admiralty-yards, where great ships were in process of
erection, destined for no nobler service than to perform their three months'
summer cruise in the Baltic, and to be frozen immovably in the harbors for
six months out of twelve. The will of the Czar can effect much, but it can not
convert Russia into a naval power until he can secure a seacoast, and harbors
which can not be shut up to him by a single hostile fortification. Russia can
not be a maritime power till she is mistress of the entrance to the Baltic and
the Black Sea.

To the right and the left of the Admiralty stretch the great squares upon
which stand the principal public edifices and monuments of the capital; the
Winter Palace, with its six thousand constant occupants; the Hotel de l'Etat
Major, whence go forth orders to a million of soldiers, the Senate House,
and the Palace of the Holy Synod, the centres of temporal and spiritual law
for the hundred nations blended into the Russian Empire; the Church of St.
Isaac, with its four porticoes, the lofty columns of which, sixty feet in height,
are each of a single block of granite, and the walls of polished marble; its
cupola covered with copper overlaid with gold, gleaming like another sun,
surmounted by a golden cross, and forming the most conspicuous object to
the approaching visitor, whether he comes up the Gulf, or across the dreary
Finnish marshes; yet, high as it rises in the air, it sinks scarcely a less
distance below the ground, so deep was it necessary to drive into the marsh
the forest of piles upon which it rests, before a firm foundation could be

secured. Here is the Statue of Peter—the finest equestrian statue in the world
—reining his steed upon the brink of the precipice up which he has urged it,
his hand stretched out in benediction toward the Neva, the pride of his new-
founded city. Here is the triumphal column to Alexander, “the Restorer of
Peace,” the whole elevation of which is 150 feet, measuring to the head of
the angel who—the cross victorious over the crescent—bears the symbol of
the Christian faith above the capital cast from cannon captured from the
Turks. The shaft is a single block eighty-four feet in height—the largest
single stone erected in modern times; and it would have been still loftier had
it not been for the blind unreasoning obedience to orders, so characteristic of
the Russian. When the column had been determined upon, orders were
dispatched to the quarries to detach, if possible, a single block for the shaft
of the length of eighty-four feet, though with scarcely a hope that the attempt
would succeed. One day a dispatch was received by the Czar from the
superintendent, with the tidings that a block had been detached, free from
flaw, one hundred feet long; but that he was about to proceed to reduce it to
the required length. The sovereign mounted in hot haste to save the block
from mutilation, and to preserve a column so much exceeding his hopes. But
he was too late; and arrived just in time to see the sixteen feet severed from
the block, which would otherwise have been the noblest shaft in the world.

The length of these public places, open and in full view, right and left, from
the Admiralty tower, is a full mile.

[pg 451]
Stretching southward from the tower lies the “Great Side” of St. Petersburg,
cut into three concentric semicircular divisions, of which the Admiralty is
the centre, by three canals, and intersected by the three main avenues or
Prospekts (Perspectives). These three Perspectives diverge like the spokes of
a wheel from the Admiralty and run straight through the city, through the
sumptuous quarters of the aristocracy, the domains of commerce, and the
suburbs of the poor; while the view is closed by the mists rising from the
swamps of Ingermanland.

Turning from the “Great Side,” and looking northward, the arms of the Neva
diverge from near the foot of the Admiralty tower, as the Perspectives do
from the southern side. The width of the Neva, its yielding bottom and
shores, and the masses of ice which it sweeps down, make the erection of

bridges so difficult that they are placed at very rare intervals, so that a person
might be obliged to go miles before reaching one. But the stream is
enlivened by boats and gondolas ready to convey passengers from one bank
to the other. We were never weary of watching with a glass from the
Admiralty tower, alternately, the river gay with boats and shipping, and the
Perspectives thronged with their brilliant and motley crowd. With a
somewhat different, but certainly no less absorbing interest, we gazed down
from the same elevation into the works of the citadel, upon Petersburg
Island, whose minutest details were clearly visible. This citadel is useless as
a defense of the city against a hostile attack; but it furnishes a ready means
of commanding the capital, and furnishes a refuge for the government in
case of an insurrection. Like the fortifications of Paris, it is designed not so
much to defend as to control the city.

St. Petersburg is certainly the most imposing city, and Russia is the most
imposing nation in the world—at first sight. But the imposing aspect of both
is to a great extent an imposition. The city tries to pass itself off for granite,
when a great proportion is of wood or brick, covered with paint and stucco,
which peels off in masses before the frosts of every winter, and needs a
whole army of plasterers and painters every spring to put it in presentable
order. You pass what appears a Grecian temple, and lo, it is only a screen of
painted boards. A one-storied house assumes the airs of a loftier building, in
virtue of a front of another story bolted and braced to its roof. And much
even that is real is sadly out of place. Long lines of balconies and pillars and
porticoes, which would be appropriate to Greece or Italy, are for the greater
part of the year piled with snow-drifts. St. Petersburg and Russian
civilization are both of a growth too hasty, and too much controlled from
without, instead of proceeding from a law of inward development, to be
enduring.

The capital to be seen to advantage must be viewed during the few weeks of
early summer; or in the opening winter, when the snow forms a pavement
better than art can produce, and when the cold has built a continuous bridge
over the Neva, without having as yet become severe enough to drive every
body from the streets.

The Neva is the main artery through which pours the life-blood of St.
Petersburg. But the life-current is checked from the time when the ice is too

far weakened by the returning sun to be passable, and not yet sufficiently
broken up to float down to the Gulf. At that time all intercourse between
portions of the city on its opposite batiks is suspended. Every body is
anxious for the breaking-up of the ice. Luxuries from more genial climes are
waiting in the Baltic for the river to be navigable. No sooner is the ice so far
cleared as to afford a practicable passage for a boat, than the glad news is
announced by the artillery of the citadel, and, no matter what the hour, the
commandant and his suite hurry into a gondola and push over to the Imperial
palace, directly opposite. The commandant fills a large goblet with the icy
fluid, and presents it to the Emperor, informing him that his gondola, the
first which has that year crossed the river, is the precursor of navigation. The
Czar drains the cup to the health of the capital, and returns it, filled with
ducats, to the commandant. Formerly it was observed, by some mysterious
law of natural science, that this goblet grew larger and larger, year by year,
so that the Czar who had swallowed Poland without flinching, and stood
ready to perform the same operation upon Turkey, stood in danger of
suffocation from his growing bumpers. Some wise man at last suggested that
this tendency to the enlargement of the goblet might be counteracted, by
limiting the number of ducats returned by way of acknowledgment. The
suggestion was acted upon, and, greatly to the comfort of the Imperial purse
and stomach, was found to be perfectly successful. The sum now given is
two hundred ducats. This goblet of Neva water is surely the most costly
draught ever quaffed since the time when brown-fronted Cleopatra dissolved
the pearl in honor of mad Mark Antony.

The most striking winter spectacle of St. Petersburg, to a foreigner, is that of
the ice mountains. They are in full glory during “Butter Week”—of which
more anon—when Russia seems to forget her desire to be any thing but
Russian. The great Place of the Admiralty is given up to the popular
celebrations, and filled with refreshment-booths, swings, and slides. To form
these ice mountains a narrow scaffold is raised to the height of some thirty or
forty feet. This scaffold has on one side steps for the purpose of ascending it;
on the other it slopes off, steeply at first, and then more gradually, until it
finally terminates on a level. Upon this long slope blocks of ice are laid, over
which water is poured, which by freezing unites the blocks, and furnishes a
uniform surface, down which the merry crowd slide upon sledges, or more
frequently upon blocks of smooth ice cut into an appropriate form.

Two of these mountains usually stand opposite and fronting each other, their
tracks lying close together, side by side.

[pg 452]

Ice Mountain.

This is a national amusement all over Russia. Ice mountains are raised in the
court-yards of all the chief residents in the capital. And an imitation of them,

for summer use, covered with some polished wood, instead of ice, is often
found in the halls of private dwellings. In the Imperial palace is such a slide,
built of mahogany.

Street-life in St. Petersburgh presents many aspects strange to one who
comes fresh from the capitals of other countries. One of the first things
which will strike him is the silence and desertion of most of the streets. The
thronging, eager crowd of other cities is here unknown. There is room
enough, and to spare here. Broad streets, lined with rows of palaces, are as
silent and lonely as deserted Tadmor, and a solitary droshka breaking the
uniformity of the loneliness, heightens the effect. Leaving these broad, still
streets, and mingling in the throng that presses in and through the Admiralty
Place, the Nevskoi Perspective, or the Place of St. Isaac, the most noticeable
feature, at first glance, is the preponderance of the military. The ordinary
garrison of the capital amounts to 60,000 men. The Russian army comprises
an almost infinite variety of uniforms, and specimens of these, worn by [pg
453] the élite of every corps, are constantly in the capital.

There are the Tartar guards, and the Circassian guards, Cossacks from the
Don, from the Ural, and from Crimea; guards with names ending with “off”
and “ski,” unpronounceable by Western lips. The wild Circassian—enacting
the double part of soldier and hostage—silver-harnessed and mail-coated,
alternates with the skin-clad Cossack of the Ural, darting, lance in rest, over
the parade-ground. There are regiments uniform not only in size of the men,
color of the horses, and identity of equipments, but in the minutiæ of
personal appearance. Of one, all the men are pug-nosed, blue-eyed, and red
bearded; of another, every man has a nose like a hawk, with eyes, hair and
beard as black as a raven's wing. Half the male population of St. Petersburg
wear uniform; for, besides these 60,000 soldiers, it is worn by officers of
every grade, by the police, and even by professors of the university, and by
teachers and pupils in the public schools.

Turning from the military to the civil portion of the population, the same
brilliant variety of costumes every where meets the eye. The sober-suited
native of western and civilized Europe, jostles the brilliant silken robes of
the Persian or Bokharian; the Chinaman flaunts his dangling pig-tail,
ingeniously pieced out by artificial means, in the face of the smoothly-shorn
Englishman; the white-toothed Arab meets the tobacco-stained German;

Yankee sailors and adventurers, portly English merchants, canny Scotchmen,
dwarfish Finlanders, stupid Lettes, diminutive Kamtschatkians, each in his
own national costume, make up a lively picture; while underlying all, and
more worthy of note than all, are the true Russian peasantry; the original
stock out of which Peter and his successors have fashioned their mighty
empire.

The Russian of the lower orders is any thing but an inviting personage, at
first sight. The name by which they have been designated, in their own
language, time out of mind, describes them precisely. It is tschornoi narod,
“the dirty people,” or as we might more freely render it, “The Great
Unwashed.” An individual of this class is called a mujik. He is usually of
middle stature, with small light eyes, level cheeks, and flat nose, of which
the tip is turned up so as to display the somewhat expanded nostril. His pride
and glory is his beard, which he wears as long and shaggy as nature will
allow. The back of the head is shaved closely; and as he wears nothing about
his neck, his head stands distinctly away from his body. His ideal of the
beauty of the human head, as seen from behind, seems to be to make it
resemble, as nearly as may be, a turnip. He is always noisy and never clean;
and when wrapped in his sheepskin mantle, or caftan of blue cloth reaching
to his knees, might easily enough be taken for a bandit. As he seldom thinks
of changing his inner garments more than once a week, and as his outer
raiment lasts half his lifetime, and is never laid aside during the night, and
never washed, he constantly affords evidence of his presence any thing but
agreeable to the organs of smell. But a closer acquaintance will bring to light
many traits of character which belie his rude exterior; and will show him to
be at bottom a good-natured, merry, friendly fellow. His most striking
characteristic is pliability and dexterity. If he does not possess the power of
originating, he has a wonderful faculty of copying the ideas of others, and of
yielding himself up to carry out the conceptions of any one who wishes to
use him for the accomplishment of his ends. There is an old German myth
which says that the Teutonic race was framed, in the depths of time, out of
the hard, unyielding granite. The original material of the Russian race must
have been Indian rubber, so easily are they compressed into any form, and so
readily do they resume their own, when the pressure is removed. The raw,
untrained mujik is drafted into the army, and in a few weeks attains a
precision of movement more like an automaton than a human being. He

becomes a trader, and the Jews themselves can not match him in cunning
and artifice.

The mujik is a thoroughly good-tempered fellow. Address him kindly, and
his face unbends at once, and you will find that he takes a sincere delight in
doing you a kindness. In no capital of Europe are the temptations to crimes
against the person so numerous as in St. Petersburg, with its broad lonely
streets, unlighted at night, and scantily patrolled; but in no capital are such
crimes of so rare occurrence.

But the mujik has two faults. He is a thorough rogue, and a great drunkard.
He will cheat and guzzle from sheer love for the practices; and without the
least apparent feeling that there is any thing out of the way in so doing. But
in his cups he is the same good-natured fellow. The Irishman or Scotchman
when drunk is quarrelsome and pugnacious; the German or the Englishman,
stupid and brutal; the Spaniard or Italian, revengeful and treacherous. The
first stages of drunkenness in the mujik are manifested by loquacity. The
drunker he is the more gay and genial does he grow; till at last he is ready to
throw himself upon the neck of his worst enemy and exchange embraces
with him. When the last stage has been reached, and he starts for his home,
he does not reel, but marches straight on, till some accidental obstruction
trips him up into the mire, where he lies unnoticed and unmolested till a
policeman takes charge of him. This misadventure is turned to public
advantage, for by an old custom every person, male or female, of what grade
soever, taken up drunk in the street by the police, is obliged the next day to
sweep the streets for a certain number of hours. In our early rambles we
often came across a woeful group thus improving the ways of others, in
punishment for having taken too little heed of their own.

In vino veritas may perhaps be true of the juice of the grape; but it is not so
of the bad brandy which is the favorite drink of the mujik. [pg 454] He is
never too drunk to be a rogue, but yet you do not look upon his roguery as
you do upon that of any other people. He never professes to be honest; and
does not see any reason why he should be so. He seems so utterly
unconscious of any thing reprehensible in roguery, that you unconsciously
give him the benefit of his ignorance. If he victimizes you, you look upon
him as upon a clever professor of legerdemain, who has cheated you in spite
of your senses; but you hardly hold him morally responsible. Upon the

whole, though you can not respect the mujik, you can hardly avoid having a
sort of liking for him.

Punishment For Drunkenness.

Perhaps the most thoroughly Russian of all the tschornoi narod are the
isvoshtshiks, or public drivers; at least they are the class with whom the
traveler comes most immediately and necessarily into contact, and from
whom he derives his idea of them. Such is the extent of St. Petersburg, that
when the foreigner has sated his curiosity with the general aspect of the

streets, he finds that he can not afford time to walk from one object of
interest to another. Moreover, in winter—and here winter means fully six
months in the year—the streets are spread with a thick covering of snow,
which soon becomes beaten up into powdered crystals, through which
locomotion is as difficult as through the deepest sands of Sahara; and the
wind whirls these keen crystals about like the sand-clouds of the desert.
Every body not to the manner born, whose pleasures or avocations call him
abroad, is glad to draw his mantle over his face, and creeping into a sledge,
wrap himself up as closely as he may in furs. In spring and summer, when
the streets are usually either a marsh or choked with intolerable dust,
pedestrianism is equally disagreeable. All this has called into requisition a
host of Jehus, so that the stranger who has mastered enough Russian to call
out Davai ishvoshtshik! “Here, driver!” or even lifts his hand by way of
signal, has seldom need to repeat the summons.

Like his cart-borne kindred, the Tartars and Scythians, the ishvoshtshik
makes his vehicle his home. In it he eats, drinks, and often sleeps, rolling
himself up into a ball in the bottom, to [pg 455] present as little surface as
possible to the action of the cold.—Russian-like, he always names a price for
his services that will leave ample room for abatement. But once engaged,
and he is for the time being your servant, and accepts any amount of abuse
or beating as the natural condition of the bargain.

Ishvoshtshiks.

The mujik of every class seems indeed to be born ready bitted, for the use of
anyone who has a hand steady enough to hold the reins. They are the best
servants in the world for one who has the gift of command. It is this
adaptation between the strong-willed autocrats who since Peter have swayed
the destinies of Russia, and the serviceable nature of the people, that has
raised the empire to its present position. A single weak ruler would change
the whole destiny of Russia.

Notwithstanding the hardships of their lives, the isvoshtshiks are good-
natured, merry, harmless, fellows, whether waiting for a fare or bantering a
customer. But they have one thorn; and that is the pedestrian. Woe to the
driver who runs against a foot-man; fine and flogging are his portion. If the
pedestrian be thrown down, visions of Siberia float before the driver's eye; to
say nothing of the pleasant foretaste of the policeman's cane and the
confiscation of his vehicle.

Notwithstanding the general characteristic of laxity of principle, instances
are by no means wanting of the most scrupulous and even romantic fidelity
on the part of the Russians of the lower orders. It would be an interesting
subject of investigation, how far this patent trait of national character is to be
attributed to inherent constitutional defects in the race; and how far to the
state of serfdom in which they have existed from generation to generation.
But the investigation does not fall within the scope of our “Recollections.”

Our friends in the greasy sheepskins or woolen caftans have strong religious
tendencies, though they may smack a little too much of those of the tight-
fingered Smyrniote whom we detected purchasing candles to light before his
patron saint, with the first-fruits of the purse of which he had not ten minutes
before relieved our pocket. In all places where men congregate there are
pictures of saints before which the mujik crosses himself on every occasion.
In an inn or restaurant each visitor turns to the picture and crosses himself
before he sits down to eat. If a mujik enters your room he crosses himself
before saluting you. Every church is saluted with a sign of the cross. At
frequent intervals in the streets little shrines are found, before which every
body stops and makes the sacred sign, with bared head. The merchant in the
gostunoi dvor or bazaar, every now and then walks up to his bog or saint,
and with a devout inclination prays for success in trade.

No one has seen St. Petersburg who has not been there at Easter. The Greek
Church finds great virtues in fasting; and a prolonged fast-time implies a
subsequent carnival. The rigor of the Russian fasts strictly excludes every
article of food containing the least particle of animal matter. Flesh and fowl
are, of course, rigorously tabooed; so are milk, eggs, butter; and even sugar,
on account of the animal matter used in refining it, of which a small portion
might possibly remain. The fast preceding Easter, called, by way of
eminence, “The Great Fast,” lasts seven full weeks, and is observed with a

strictness unknown even in Catholic countries. The lower classes refrain
even from fish during the first and last of these seven weeks, as well as on
Wednesdays and Fridays in the remaining five. When we reflect how large a
part some or all of these animal substances form of the cuisine of all
northern nations, and in Russia most of all, we shall be ready to believe that
this Great Fast is an important epoch in the Russian calendar, and is not to be
encountered without a preparatory period of feasting, the recollection of
which may serve to mitigate the enforced abstinence.

Among the upper classes in St. Petersburg balls, routs, and all carnival
revelries begin to crowd thick and fast upon each other as early as the
commencement of February. But the mass of the people compress these
preparatory exercises into the week before the beginning of the fast. This is
the famous Masslänitza or “Butter Week,” which contains the sum and
substance [pg 456] of all Russian festivity. All the butter that should
naturally have gone into the consumption of the succeeding seven weeks is
concentrated into this. Whatever can be eaten with butter is buttered; what
can not, is eschewed. The standard dish of the week is blinni, a kind of
pancake, made with butter; fried in butter, and eaten with butter-sauce. For
this one week the great national dish of shtshee or cabbage-soup is banished
from the land.

Breakfast dispatched, then come the amusements. Formerly the swings, ice-
mountains, and temporary theatres were erected upon the frozen plain of the
Neva. But some years since, the ice gave way under the immense pressure,
and a large number of the revelers were drowned. Since that time the great
square of the Admiralty has been devoted to this purpose. For days previous,
long trains of sledges are seen thronging to the spot, bearing timbers, poles,
planks, huge blocks of ice, and all the materials necessary for the erection of
booths, theatres, swings, and slides. These temporary structures are easily
and speedily reared. A hole is dug in the frozen ground, into which the end
of a post is placed. It is then filled with water, which under the influence of a
Russian February binds it in its place as firmly as though it were leaded into
a solid rock. The carnival commences on the first Sunday of the Butter
Week, and all St. Petersburg gives itself up to sliding and swinging, or to
watching the sliding and swinging of others. By a wise regulation eating and
drinking shops are not allowed in the square, and the staple potable and
comestibles are tea, cakes, and nuts. Few more animated and stirring sights

are to be seen than the Admiralty square at noon, when the mirth is at the
highest among the lower orders, and when all the higher classes make their
appearance driving in regular line along a broad space, in front of the booths,
reserved for the equipages. Every body in St. Petersburg of any pretensions
to rank or wealth keeps a carriage of some kind; and every carriage, crowded
with the family in their gayest attire, joins in the procession.

Butter Week, with its blinni and ice mountains passes away all too quickly,
and is succeeded by the grim seven weeks' fast. The Admiralty square looks
desolate enough, lumbered over with fragments of the late joyous
paraphernalia, and strewed with nut-shells and orange-peel. Public
amusements, of almost all kinds are prohibited, and time passes on with
gloomy monotony, only broken by a stray saint's day, like a gleam of
sunshine across a murky sky. It is worth while to be a saint, in Russia, if his
day falls during the Great Fast, for it will be sure to be celebrated with most
exemplary fervor.

As the fast draws near its close, preparation s on tiptoe for a change. The
egg-market begins to rise, owing to the demand for “Easter-eggs,” for on
that day it is customary to present an egg to every acquaintance on first
greeting him. This has given rise to a very pretty custom of giving presents
of artificial eggs of every variety of material, and frequently with the most
elegant decorations. The Imperial glass manufactory furnishes an immense
number of eggs of glass, with cut flowers and figures, designed as presents
from the Czar and Czarina.

Saturday night before Easter at last comes and goes. As the midnight hour
which is to usher in Easter-day approaches, the churches begin to fill. The
court appears in the Imperial chapel in full dress; and the people, of all ages,
ranks, and conditions, throng their respective places of worship. Not a priest,
however, is to be seen until the midnight hour strikes, when the entrance to
the sanctuary of the church is flung open, and the song peals forth—
Christohs vosskress! Christohs vosskress ihs mortvui—“Christ is risen!
Christ is risen from the dead!” The priests in their richest robes press
through the throng, bowing and swinging their censers before the shrine of
the saints, repeating the “Christ is risen!” The congregation grasp each
other's hands, those acquainted, however distantly, embracing and kissing,
repeating the same words. The churches are at once in a blaze of

illumination within and without; and all over the city cannons boom, rockets
hiss, and bells peal in token of joy. The Great Fast is over, and the Easter
festival has begun.

In the churches the ceremony of blessing the food is going on. The whole
pavement, unencumbered with pews or seats, is covered with dishes ranged
in long rows, with passages between for the officiating priests, who pace
along, sprinkling holy water to the right and left, and pronouncing the form
of benediction; the owner of each dish all the while on a keen look-out that
his food does not fail of receiving some drops of the sanctifying fluid.
Before daylight all this is accomplished; and then come visitings and
banquets, congratulations of the season, bowings, hand-shakings, and, above
all, kissing.

All Russia breaks out now into an Oriental exuberance of kisses. What
arithmetic shall undertake to compute the osculatory expenditure? Every
member of a family salutes every other member with a kiss. All
acquaintances, [pg 457] however slight, greet with a kiss and a Christohs
vosskress. Long-robed mujiks mingle beards and kisses, or brush their
hirsute honors over the faces of their female acquaintances. In the public
offices all the employées salute each other and their superiors. So in the
army. The general embraces and kisses all the officers of the corps; the
colonel of a regiment those beneath him, besides a deputation of the soldiers;
and the captain salutes all the men of his company. The Czar does duty at

Easter. He must of course salute his family and retinue, his court and
attendants. But this is not all. On parade he goes through the ceremony with
his officers, and a selected body of privates, who stand as representatives of
the rest, and even with the sentinels at the palace gates. So amid smiles and
handshakings, and exclamations of “Christ has arisen!” pass on the days of
the Easter festival. Ample amends are made for the long abstinence of the
Great Fast, by unbounded indulgence in the coveted animal food, to say
nothing of the copious libations of brandy—evidences of which are visible
enough in groups of amateur street-sweepers who subsequently are seen
plying their brooms in the early morning hours. Such is St. Petersburg, when
most Russian.

A Love Affair At Cranford.

I am tempted to relate it, as having interested me in a quiet sort of way, and
as being the latest intelligence of Our Society at Cranford.

I thought, after Miss Jenkyns's death, that probably my connection with
Cranford would cease; at least that it would have to be kept up by
correspondence, which bears much the same relation to personal intercourse
that the books of dried plants I sometimes see (“Hortus Siccus,” I think they
call the thing), do to the living and fresh flowers in the lanes and meadows.
I was pleasantly surprised, therefore, by receiving a letter from Miss Pole
(who had always come in for a supplementary week after my annual visit to
Miss Jenkyns), proposing that I should go and stay with her; and then, in a
couple of days after my acceptance, came a note from Miss Matey, in
which, in a rather circuitous and very humble manner, she told me how
much pleasure I should confer, if I could spend a week or two with her,
either before or after I had been at Miss Pole's; “for,” she said, “since my
dear sister's death, I am well aware I have no attractions to offer; it is only
to the kindness of my friends that I can owe their company.”

Of course, I promised to come to dear Miss Matey, as soon as I had ended
my visit to Miss Pole; and the day after my arrival at Cranford, I went to see
her, much wondering what the house would be like without Miss Jenkyns,
and rather dreading the changed aspect of things. Miss Matey began to cry
as soon as she saw me. She was evidently nervous from having anticipated
my call. I comforted her as well as I could; and I found the best consolation
I could give, was the honest praise that came from my heart as I spoke of
the deceased. Miss Matey slowly shook her head over each virtue as it was
named, and attributed to her sister; at last she could not restrain the tears

which had long been silently flowing, but hid her face behind her
handkerchief, and sobbed aloud.

“Dear Miss Matey!” said I, taking her hand—for indeed I did know in what
way to tell her how sorry I was for her, left deserted in the world. She put
down her handkerchief, and said,

“My dear, I'd rather you did not call me [pg 458] Matey. She did not like it;
but I did many a thing she did not like, I'm afraid—and now she's gone! If
you please, my love, will you call me Matilda?”

I promised faithfully, and began to practice the new name with Miss Pole
that very day; and, by degrees, Miss Matilda's feelings on the subject were
known through Cranford, and the appellation of Matey was dropped by all,
except a very old woman who had been nurse in the rector's family, and had
persevered through many long years, in calling the Miss Jenkynses “the
girls;” she said “Matey,” to the day of her death.

My visit to Miss Pole was very quiet. Miss Jenkyns had so long taken the
lead in Cranford, that, now she was gone, they hardly knew how to give a
party. The Honorable Mrs. Jamieson, to whom Miss Jenkyns herself had
always yielded the post of honor, was fat and inert and very much at the
mercy of her old servants. If they chose her to give a party, they reminded
her of the necessity for so doing; if not, she let it alone. There was all the
more time for me to hear old-world stories from Miss Pole, while she sat
knitting, and I making my father's shirts. I always took a quantity of plain
sewing to Cranford; for, as we did not read much, or walk much, I found it
a capital time to get through my work. One of Miss Pole's stories related to
the love affair I am coming to; gradually, not in a hurry, for we are never in
a hurry at Cranford.

Presently, the time arrived, when I was to remove to Miss Matilda's house. I
found her timid and anxious about the arrangements for my comfort. Many
a time, while I was unpacking, did she come backward and forward to stir
the fire, which burned all the worse for being so frequently poked.

“Have you drawers enough, dear?” asked she. “I don't know exactly how
my sister used to arrange them. She had capital methods. I am sure she

would have trained a servant in a week to make a better fire than this, and
Fanny has been with me four months.”

This subject of servants was a standing grievance, and I could not wonder
much at it; for if gentlemen were scarce, and almost unheard of in the
“genteel society” of Cranford, they or their counterparts—handsome young
men—abounded in the lower classes. The pretty, neat servant-maids had
their choice of desirable “followers;” and their mistresses, without having
the sort of mysterious dread of men and matrimony that Miss Matilda had,
might well feel a little anxious, lest the heads of their comely maids should
be turned by the joiner, or the butcher, or the gardener; who were obliged by
their callings, to come to the house; and who, as ill-luck would have it, were
generally handsome and unmarried. Fanny's lovers, if she had any—and
Miss Matilda suspected her of so many flirtations, that, if she had not been
very pretty, I should have doubted her having one—were a constant anxiety
to her mistress. She was forbidden, by the articles of her engagement, to
have “followers;” and though she had answered innocently enough,
doubling up the hem of her apron as she spoke, “Please, ma'am, I never had
more than one at a time,” Miss Matey prohibited that one. But a vision of a
man seemed to haunt the kitchen. Fanny assured me that it was all fancy; or
else I should have said myself that I had seen a man's coat-tails whisk into
the scullery once, when I went on an errand into the store-room at night;
and another evening when, our watches having stopped, I went to look at
the clock, there was a very odd appearance, singularly like a young man
squeezed up between the clock and the back of the open kitchen-door; and I
thought Fanny snatched up the candle very hastily, so as to throw the
shadow on the clock-face, while she very positively told me the time half-
an-hour too early, as we found out afterward by the church-clock. But I did
not add to Miss Matey's anxieties by naming my suspicions, especially as
Fanny said to me, the next day, that it was such a queer kitchen for having
odd shadows about it, she really was almost afraid to stay; “for you know,
Miss,” she added, “I don't see a creature from six o'clock tea, till missus
rings the bell for prayers at ten.”

However, it so fell out that Fanny had to leave; and Miss Matilda begged
me to stay and “settle her” with the new maid; to which I consented, after I
had heard from my father that he did not want me at home. The new servant

was a rough, honest-looking country-girl, who had only lived in a farm-
place before; but I liked her looks when she came to be hired; and I
promised Miss Matilda to put her in the ways of the house. These said ways
were religiously such as Miss Matilda thought her sister would approve.
Many a domestic rule and regulation had been a subject of plaintive
whispered murmur, to me, during Miss Jenkyns's life; but now that she was
gone, I do not think that even I, who was a favorite, durst have suggested an
alteration. To give an instance: we constantly adhered to the forms which
were observed, at meal times, “in my father the rector's house.”
Accordingly, we had always wine and dessert; but the decanters were only
filled when there was a party; and what remained was seldom touched,
though we had two wine glasses apiece every day after dinner, until the next
festive occasion arrived; when the state of the remainder wine was
examined into, in a family council. The dregs were often given to the poor;
but occasionally when a good deal had been left, at the last party (five
months ago, it might be) it was added to some of a fresh bottle, brought up
from the cellar. I fancy poor Captain Brown did not much like wine; for I
noticed he never finished his first glass, and most military men take several.
Then, as to our dessert, Miss Jenkyns used to gather currants and
gooseberries for it herself, which I sometimes thought would have tasted
better fresh from the trees; but then, as Miss Jenkyns observed, there would
have been nothing for dessert in summer-time. As it was, we felt very
genteel with our two glasses [pg 459] apiece, and a dish of gooseberries at
the top, of currants and biscuits at the sides, and two decanters at the
bottom. When oranges came in, a curious proceeding was gone through.
Miss Jenkyns did not like to cut the fruit; for, as she observed, the juice all
ran out, nobody knew where; sucking (only, I think, she used some more
recondite word) was in fact the only way of enjoying oranges; but then
there was the unpleasant association with a ceremony frequently gone
through by little babies; and so, after dessert, in orange season, Miss
Jenkyns and Miss Matey used to rise up, possess themselves each of an
orange in silence, and withdraw to the privacy of their own rooms, to
indulge in sucking oranges.

I had once or twice tried, on such occasions, to prevail on Miss Matey to
stay; and had succeeded in her sister's life-time. I held up a screen, and did
not look, and, as she said, she tried not to make the noise very offensive; but

now that she was left alone, she seemed quite horrified when I begged her
to remain with me in the warm dining-parlor, and enjoy her orange as she
liked best. And so it was in every thing. Miss Jenkyns's rules were made
more stringent than ever, because the framer of them was gone where there
could be no appeal. In every thing else Miss Matilda was meek and
undecided to a fault. I have heard Fanny turn her round twenty times in a
morning about dinner, just as the little hussy chose; and I sometimes
fancied she worked on Miss Matilda's weakness, in order to bewilder her,
and to make her feel more in the power of her clever servant. I determined
that I would not leave her till I had seen what sort of a person Martha was;
and, if I found her trustworthy, I would tell her not to trouble her mistress
with every little decision.

Martha was blunt and plain-spoken to a fault; otherwise she was a brisk,
well-meaning, but very ignorant girl. She had not been with us a week
before Miss Matilda and I were astounded one morning by the receipt of a
letter from a cousin of hers, who had been twenty or thirty years in India,
and who had lately, as we had seen by the Army List, returned to England,
bringing with him an invalid wife, who had never been introduced to her
English relations. Major Jenkyns wrote to propose that he and his wife
should spend a night at Cranford, on his way to Scotland—at the inn, if it
did not suit Miss Matilda to receive them into her house; in which case they
should hope to be with her as much as possible during the day. Of course, it
must suit her, as she said; for all Cranford knew that she had her sister's
bedroom at liberty; but I am sure she wished the Major had stopped in India
and forgotten his cousins out and out.

“Oh! how must I manage!” asked she, helplessly. “If Deborah had been
alive, she would have known what to do with a gentleman-visitor. Must I
put razors in his dressing-room? Dear! dear! and I've got none. Deborah
would have had them. And slippers, and coat-brushes?” I suggested that
probably he would bring all these things with him. “And after dinner, how
am I to know when to get up, and leave him to his wine? Deborah would
have done it so well; she would have been quite in her element. Will he
want coffee, do you think?” I undertook the management of the coffee, and
told her I would instruct Martha in the art of waiting, in which it must be
owned she was terribly deficient; and that I had no doubt Major and Mrs.

Jenkyns would understand the quiet mode in which a lady lived by herself
in a country town. But she was sadly fluttered. I made her empty her
decanters, and bring up two fresh bottles of wine. I wished I could have
prevented her from being present at my instructions to Martha; for she
continually cut in with some fresh direction, muddling the poor girl's mind,
as she stood open-mouthed, listening to us both.

“Hand the vegetables round,” said I (foolishly, I see now—for it was aiming
at more than we could accomplish with quietness and simplicity); and then,
seeing her look bewildered, I added, “Take the vegetables round to people,
and let them help themselves.”

“And mind you go first to the ladies,” put in Miss Matilda. “Always go to
the ladies before gentlemen, when you are waiting.”

“I'll do it as you tell me, ma'am,” said Martha; “but I like lads best.”

We felt very uncomfortable and shocked at this speech of Martha's; yet I
don't think she meant any harm; and, on the whole, she attended very well
to our directions, except that she “nudged” the Major, when he did not help
himself as soon as she expected, to the potatoes, while she was handing
them round.

The Major and his wife were quiet, unpretending people enough when they
did come; languid, as all East Indians are, I suppose. We were rather
dismayed at their bringing two servants with them, a Hindoo body-servant
for the Major, and a steady elderly maid for his wife; but they slept at the
inn, and took off a good deal of the responsibility by attending carefully to
their master's and mistress's comfort. Martha, to be sure, had never ended
her staring at the East Indian's white turban, and brown complexion, and I
saw that Miss Matilda shrunk away from him a little as he waited at dinner.
Indeed, she asked me, when they were gone, if he did not remind me of
Blue Beard? On the whole, the visit was most satisfactory, and is a subject
of conversation even now with Miss Matilda; at the time it greatly excited
Cranford, and even stirred up the apathetic and Honorable Mrs. Jamieson to
some expression of interest when I went to call and thank her for the kind
answers she had vouchsafed to Miss Matilda's inquiries as to the
arrangement of a gentleman's dressing-room—answers which I must

confess she had given in the wearied manner of the Scandinavian
prophetess—

“Leave me, leave me to repose.”

And now I come to the love affair.

It seems that Miss Pole had a cousin, once or twice removed, who had
offered to Miss Matey [pg 460] long ago. Now, this cousin lived four or five
miles from Cranford on his own estate; but his property was not large
enough to entitle him to rank higher than a yeoman; or rather, with
something of the “pride which apes humility,” he had refused to push
himself on, as so many of his class had done, into the ranks of the squires.
He would not allow himself to be called Thomas Holbrook, Esq.; he even
sent back letters with this address, telling the postmistress at Cranford that
his name was Mr. Thomas Holbrook, yeoman. He rejected all domestic
innovations; he would have the house door stand open in summer, and shut
in winter, without knocker or bell to summon a servant. The closed fist or
the knob of the stick did this office for him, if he found the door locked. He
despised every refinement which had not its root deep down in humanity. If
people were not ill, he saw no necessity for moderating his voice. He spoke
the dialect of the country in perfection, and constantly used it in
conversation; although Miss Pole (who gave me these particulars) added,
that he read aloud more beautifully and with more feeling than any one she
had ever heard, except the late Rector.

“And how came Miss Matilda not to marry him?” asked I.

“Oh, I don't know. She was willing enough, I think; but you know Cousin
Thomas would not have been enough of a gentleman for the Rector, and
Mrs. and Miss Jenkyns.”

“Well! but they were not to marry him,” said I, impatiently.

“No; but they did not like Miss Matey to marry below her rank. You know
she was the Rector's daughter, and somehow they are related to Sir Peter
Arley: Miss Jenkyns thought a deal of that.”

“Poor Miss Matey!” said I.

“Nay, now, I don't know any thing more than that he offered and was
refused. Miss Matey might not like him—and Miss Jenkyns might never
have said a word—it is only a guess of mine.”

“Has she never seen him since?” I inquired.

“No, I think not. You see, Woodley, Cousin Thomas's house, lies half-way
between Cranford and Misselton; and I know he made Misselton his
market-town very soon after he had offered to Miss Matey; and I don't think
he has been into Cranford above once or twice since—once, when I was
walking with Miss Matey in High-street; and suddenly she darted from me,
and went up Shire-lane. A few minutes after I was startled by meeting
Cousin Thomas.”

“How old is he?” I asked, after a pause of castle-building.

“He must be about seventy, I think, my dear,” said Miss Pole, blowing up
my castle, as if by gunpowder, into small fragments.

Very soon after—at least during my long visit to Miss Matilda—I had the
opportunity of seeing Mr. Holbrook; seeing, too, his first encounter with his
former love, after thirty or forty years' separation. I was helping to decide
whether any of the new assortment of colored silks which they had just
received at the shop, would help to match a gray and black mousseline-de-
laine that wanted a new breadth, when a tall, thin, Don Quixote-looking old
man came into the shop for some woolen gloves. I had never seen the
person (who was rather striking) before, and I watched him rather
attentively, while Miss Matey listened to the shopman. The stranger wore a
blue coat with brass buttons, drab breeches, and gaiters, and drummed with
his fingers on the counter until he was attended to. When he answered the
shop-boy's question, “What can I have the pleasure of showing you to-day,
sir?” I saw Miss Matilda start, and then suddenly sit down; and instantly I
guessed who it was. She had made some inquiry which had to be carried
round to the other shopman.

“Miss Jenkyns wants the black sarcenet two-and-twopence the yard;” and
Mr. Holbrook had caught the name, and was across the shop in two strides.

“Matey—Miss Matilda—Miss Jenkyns! God bless my soul! I should not
have known you. How are you? how are you?” He kept shaking her hand in
a way which proved the warmth of his friendship; but he repeated so often,
as if to himself, “I should not have known you!” that any sentimental
romance which I might be inclined to build, was quite done away with by
his manner.

However, he kept talking to us all the time we were in the shop; and then
waving the shopman with the unpurchased gloves on one side, with
“Another time, sir! another time!” he walked home with us. I am happy to
say my client, Miss Matilda, also left the shop in an equally bewildered
state, not having purchased either green or red silk. Mr. Holbrook was
evidently full with honest, loud-spoken joy at meeting his old love again; he
touched on the changes that had taken place; he even spoke of Miss Jenkyns
as “Your poor sister! Well, well! we have all our faults;” and bade us good-
by with many a hope that he should soon see Miss Matey again. She went
straight to her room; and never came back till our early tea-time, when I
thought she looked as if she had been crying.

A few days after, a note came from Mr. Holbrook, asking us—impartially
asking both of us—in a formal, old-fashioned style, to spend a day at his
house—a long June day—for it was June now. He named that he had also
invited his cousin, Miss Pole; so that we might join in a fly, which could be
put up at his house.

I expected Miss Matey to jump at this invitation; but, no! Miss Pole and I
had the greatest difficulty in persuading her to go. She thought it was
improper; and was even half-annoyed when we utterly ignored the idea of
any impropriety in her going with two other ladies to see her old lover.
Then came a more serious difficulty. She did not think Deborah would have
liked her to go. This took us half a day's good hard talking to get over; but,
at the first sentence of relenting, I seized the opportunity, and wrote [pg
461] and dispatched an acceptance in her name—fixing day and hour, that
all might be decided and done with.

The next morning she asked me if I would go down to the shop with her;
and there, after much hesitation, we chose out three caps to be sent home
and tried on, that the most becoming might be selected to take with us on
Thursday.

She was in a state of silent agitation all the way to Woodley. She had
evidently never been there before; and, although she little dreamt I knew
any thing of her early story, I could perceive she was in a tremor at the
thought of seeing the place which might have been her home, and round
which it is probable that many of her innocent girlish imaginations had
clustered. It was a long drive there, through paved jolting lanes. Miss
Matilda sate bolt upright, and looked wistfully out of the windows, as we
drew near the end of our journey. The aspect of the country was quiet and
pastoral. Woodley stood among fields; and there was an old-fashioned
garden, where roses and currant-bushes touched each other, and where the
feathery asparagus formed a pretty back-ground to the pinks and gilly-
flowers; there was no drive up to the door; we got out at a little gate, and
walked up a straight box-edged path.

“My cousin might make a drive, I think,” said Miss Pole, who was afraid of
ear-ache, and had only her cap on.

“I think it is very pretty,” said Miss Matey, with a soft plaintiveness in her
voice, and almost in a whisper; for just then Mr. Holbrook appeared at the
door, rubbing his hands in very effervescence of hospitality. He looked
more like my idea of Don Quixote than ever, and yet the likeness was only
external. His respectable housekeeper stood modestly at the door to bid us
welcome; and, while she led the elder ladies upstairs to a bed-room, I
begged to look about the garden. My request evidently pleased the old
gentleman; who took me all round the place, and showed me his six-and-
twenty cows, named after the different letters of the alphabet. As we went
along, he surprised me occasionally by repeating apt and beautiful
quotations from the poets, ranging easily from Shakspeare and George
Herbert to those of our own day. He did this as naturally as if he were
thinking aloud, that their true and beautiful words were the best expression
he could find for what he was thinking or feeling. To be sure he called
Byron “my Lord Byron,” and pronounced the name of Goethe strictly in

accordance with the English sound of the letters—“As Goëthe says, 'Ye
ever verdant palaces,'” &c. Altogether, I never met with a man, before or
since, who had spent so long a life in a secluded and not impressive
country, with ever-increasing delight in the daily and yearly change of
season and beauty.

When he and I went in, we found that dinner was nearly ready in the
kitchen—for so I suppose the room ought to be called, as there were oak
dressers and cupboards all round, all over by the side of the fire-place, and
only a small Turkey-carpet in the middle of the flag-floor. The room might
have been easily made into a handsome dark-oak dining-parlor, by
removing the oven, and a few other appurtenances of a kitchen, which were
evidently never used; the real cooking-place being at some distance. The
room in which we were expected to sit was a stiffly furnished, ugly
apartment; but that in which we did sit was what Mr. Holbrook called the
counting-house, where he paid his laborers their weekly wages, at a great
desk near the door. The rest of the pretty sitting-room—looking into the
orchard, and all covered over with dancing tree-shadows—was filled with
books. They lay on the ground, they covered the walls, they strewed the
table. He was evidently half ashamed and half proud of his extravagance in
this respect. They were of all kinds—poetry, and wild weird tales
prevailing. He evidently chose his books in accordance with his own tastes,
not because such and such were classical, or established favorites.

“Ah!” he said, “we farmers ought not to have much time for reading; yet
somehow one can't help it.”

“What a pretty room!” said Miss Matey, sotto voce.

“What a pleasant place!” said I, aloud, almost simultaneously.

“Nay! if you like it,” replied he; “but can you sit on these great black
leather three-cornered chairs? I like it better than the best parlor; but I
thought ladies would take that for the smarter place.”

It was the smarter place; but, like most smart things, not at all pretty, or
pleasant, or home-like; so, while we were at dinner, the servant-girl dusted

and scrubbed the counting-house chairs, and we sate there all the rest of the
day.

We had pudding before meat; and I thought Mr. Holbrook was going to
make some apology for his old-fashioned ways, for he began,

“I don't know whether you like newfangled ways.”

“Oh! not at all!” said Miss Matey.

“No more do I,” said he. “My housekeeper will have things in her new
fashion; or else I tell her, that when I was a young man, we used to keep
strictly to my father's rule, ‘No broth, no ball; no ball, no beef;’ and always
began dinner with broth. Then we had suet puddings, boiled in the broth
with the beef; and then the meat itself. If we did not sup our broth, we had
no ball, which we liked a deal better; and the beef came last of all, and only
those had it who had done justice to the broth and the ball. Now folks begin
with sweet things, and turn their dinners topsy-turvy.”

When the ducks and green pease came, we looked at each other in dismay;
we had only two-pronged, black-handled forks. It is true, the steel was as
bright as silver; but, what were we to do? Miss Matey picked up her peas,
one by one, on the point of the prongs, much as Aminé ate her grains of rice
after her previous feast with the Ghoul. Miss Pole sighed over [pg 462] her
delicate young peas as she left them on one side of her plate untasted; for
they would drop between the prongs. I looked at my host: the peas were
going wholesale into his capacious mouth, shoveled up by his large round-
ended knife. I saw, I imitated, I survived! My friends, in spite of my
precedent, could not muster up courage enough to do an ungenteel thing;
and, if Mr. Holbrook had not been so heartily hungry, he would, probably,
have seen that the good pease went away almost untouched.

After dinner, a clay-pipe was brought in, and a spittoon; and, asking us to
retire to another room, where he would soon join us, if we disliked tobacco-
smoke, he presented his pipe to Miss Matey, and requested her to fill the
bowl. This was a compliment to a lady in his youth; but it was rather
inappropriate to propose it as an honor to Miss Matey, who had been trained
by her sister to hold smoking of every kind in utter abhorrence. But if it was

a shock to her refinement, it was also a gratification to her feelings to be
thus selected; so she daintily stuffed the strong tobacco into the pipe; and
then we withdrew.

“It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor,” said Miss Matey, softly, as we
settled ourselves in the counting-house. “I only hope it is not improper; so
many pleasant things are!”

“What a number of books he has!” said Miss Pole, looking round the room.
“And how dusty they are!”

“I think it must be like one of the great Dr. Johnson's rooms,” said Miss
Matey. “What a superior man your cousin must be!”

“Yes!” said Miss Pole; “he is a great reader; but I am afraid he has got into
very uncouth habits with living alone.”

“Oh! uncouth is too hard a word. I should call him eccentric; very clever
people always are!” replied Miss Matey.

When Mr. Holbrook returned, he proposed a walk in the fields; but the two
elder ladies were afraid of damp and dirt; and had only very unbecoming
calashes to put over their caps; so they declined; and I was again his
companion in a turn which he said he was obliged to take, to see after his
niece. He strode along, either wholly forgetting my existence, or soothed
into silence by his pipe—and yet it was not silence exactly. He walked
before me, with a stooping gait, his hands clasped behind him; and, as some
tree, or cloud, or glimpse of distant upland pastures struck him, he quoted
poetry to himself; saying it out loud in a grand, sonorous voice, with just
the emphasis that true feeling and appreciation give. We came upon an old
cedar-tree, which stood at one end of the house;

“More black than ash-buds in the front of March,
A cedar spread his dark-green layers of shade.”

“Capital term—‘layers!’ Wonderful man!” I did not know whether he was
speaking to me or not; but I put in an assenting “wonderful,” although I

knew nothing about it; just because I was tired of being forgotten, and of
being consequently silent.

He turned sharp round. “Ay! you may say ‘wonderful.’ Why, when I saw the
review of his poems in ‘Blackwood,’ I set off within an hour, and walked
seven miles to Misselton (for the horses were not in the way), and ordered
them. Now, what color are ash-buds in March?”

Is the man going mad? thought I. He is very like Don Quixote.

“What color are they, I say?” repeated he, vehemently.

“I am sure I don't know, sir,” said I, with the meekness of ignorance.

“I knew you didn't. No more did I—an old fool that I am! till this young
man comes and tells me. ‘Black as ash-buds in March.’ And I've lived all
my life in the country; more shame for me not to know. Black; they are jet-
black, madam.” And he went off again, swinging along to the music of
some rhyme he had got hold of.

When he came home nothing would serve him but that he must read us the
poems he had been speaking of; and Miss Pole encouraged him in his
proposal, I thought, because she wished me to hear his beautiful reading, of
which she had boasted; but she afterward said it was because she had got to
a difficult part of her crotchet, and wanted to count her stitches without
having to talk. Whatever he had proposed would have been right to Miss
Matey; although she did fall sound asleep within five minutes after he
began a long poem called “Locksley Hall,” and had a comfortable nap,
unobserved, till he ended; when the cessation of his voice wakened her up,
and she said, feeling that something was expected, and that Miss Pole was
counting:

“What a pretty book!”

“Pretty! madam! it's beautiful! Pretty, indeed!”

“Oh, yes! I meant beautiful!” said she, fluttered at his disapproval of her
word. “It is so like that beautiful poem of Dr. Johnson's my sister used to

read—I forget the name of it; what was it, my dear?” turning to me.

“Which do you mean, ma'am? What was it about?”

“I don't remember what it was about, and I've quite forgotten what the name
of it was; but it was written by Dr. Johnson, and was very beautiful, and
very like what Mr. Holbrook has just been reading.”

“I don't remember it,” said he, reflectively, “but I don't know Dr. Johnson's
poems well. I must read them.”

As we were getting into the fly to return, I heard Mr. Holbrook say he
should call on the ladies soon, and inquire how they got home; and this
evidently pleased and fluttered Miss Matey at the time he said it; but after
we had lost sight of the old house among the trees, her sentiments toward
the master of it were gradually absorbed into a distressing wonder as to
whether Martha had broken her word, and seized on the opportunity of her
mistress's absence to have a “follower.” Martha looked good, and steady,
and composed enough, as she came to help us [pg 463] out; she was always
careful of Miss Matey, and to-night she made use of this unlucky speech:

“Eh! dear ma'am, to think of your going out on an evening in such a thin
shawl! It is no better than muslin. At your age, ma'am, you should be
careful.”

“My age!” said Miss Matey, almost speaking crossly, for her; for she was
usually gentle. “My age! Why, how old do you think I am, that you talk
about my age?”

“Well, ma'am! I should say you were not far short of sixty; but folks' looks
is often against them—and I'm sure I meant no harm.”

“Martha, I'm not yet fifty-two!” said Miss Matey, with grave emphasis; for
probably the remembrance of her youth had come very vividly before her
this day, and she was annoyed at finding that golden time so far away in the
past.

But she never spoke of any former and more intimate acquaintance with Mr.
Holbrook. She had probably met with so little sympathy in her early love,
that she had shut it up close in her heart; and it was only by a sort of
watching, which I could hardly avoid, since Miss Pole's confidence, that I
saw how faithful her poor heart had been in its sorrow and its silence.

She gave me some good reason for wearing her best cap every day, and sate
near the window, in spite of her rheumatism, in order to see, without being
seen, down into the street.

He came. He put his open palms upon his knees, which were far apart, as he
sate with his head bent down, whistling, after we had replied to his inquiries
about our safe return. Suddenly, he jumped up.

“Well, madam! have you any commands for Paris? I'm going there in a
week or two.”

“To Paris!” we both exclaimed.

“Yes, ma'am! I've never been there, and always had a wish to go; and I
think if I don't go soon, I mayn't go at all; so as soon as the hay is got in I
shall go, before harvest-time.”

We were so much astonished, that we had no commissions.

Just as he was going out of the room, he turned back, with his favorite
exclamation:

“God bless my soul, madam! but I nearly forgot half my errand. Here are
the poems for you, you admired so much the other evening at my house.”
He tugged away at a parcel in his coat-pocket. “Good-by, Miss,” said he;
“good-by, Matey! take care of yourself.” And he was gone. But he had
given her a book, and he had called her Matey, just as he used to do thirty
years ago.

“I wish he would not go to Paris,” said Miss Matilda, anxiously. “I don't
believe frogs will agree with him; he used to have to be very careful what
he ate, which was curious in so strong-looking a young man.”

Soon after this I took my leave, giving many an injunction to Martha to
look after her mistress, and to let me know if she thought that Miss Matilda
was not so well; in which case I would volunteer a visit to my old friend,
without noticing Martha's intelligence to her.

Accordingly I received a line or two from Martha every now and then; and,
about November, I had a note to say her mistress was “very low, and sadly
off her food;” and the account made me so uneasy, that, although Martha
did not decidedly summon me, I packed up my things and went.

I received a warm welcome, in spite of the little flurry produced by my
impromptu visit, for I had only been able to give a day's notice. Miss
Matilda looked miserably ill; and I prepared to comfort and cosset her.

I went down to have a private talk with Martha.

“How long has your mistress been so poorly?” I asked, as I stood by the
kitchen fire.

“Well! I think it's better than a fortnight; it is, I know: it was one Tuesday
after Miss Pole had been here that she went into this moping way. I thought
she was tired, and it would go off with a night's rest; but, no! she has gone
on and on ever since, till I thought it my duty to write to you, ma'am.”

“You did quite right, Martha. It is a comfort to think she has so faithful a
servant about her. And I hope you find your place comfortable?”

“Well, ma'am, missus is very kind, and there's plenty to eat and drink, and
no more work but what I can do easily—but—” Martha hesitated.

“But what, Martha?”

“Why, it seems so hard of missus not to let me have any followers; there's
such lots of young fellows in the town; and many a one has as much as
offered to keep company with me; and I may never be in such a likely place
again, and it's like wasting an opportunity. Many a girl as I know would
have 'em unbeknownst to missus; but I've given my word, and I'll stick to it;
or else this is just the house for missus never to be the wiser if they did

come: and it's such a capable kitchen—there's such good dark corners in it
—I'd be bound to hide any one. I counted up last Sunday night—for I'll not
deny I was crying because I had to shut the door in Jem Hearn's face; and
he's a steady young man, fit for any girl; only I had given missus my word.”
Martha was all but crying again; and I had little comfort to give her, for I
knew, from old experience, of the horror with which both the Miss
Jenkynses looked upon “followers;” and in Miss Matey's present nervous
state this dread was not likely to be lessened.

I went to see Miss Pole the next day, and took her completely by surprise;
for she had not been to see Miss Matilda for two days.

“And now I must go back with you, my dear, for I promised to let her know
how Thomas Holbrook went on; and I'm sorry to say his housekeeper has
sent me word to-day that he hasn't long to live. Poor Thomas! That journey
to Paris was quite too much for him. His housekeeper says he has hardly
ever been round his fields since; but just sits with his hands on his knees in
the counting-house, not reading or any thing, but only saying, what a
wonderful city [pg 464] Paris was! Paris has much to answer for, if it's
killed my cousin Thomas, for a better man never lived.”

“Does Miss Matilda know of his illness?” asked I; a new light as to the
cause of her indisposition dawning upon me.

“Dear! to be sure, yes! Has she not told you? I let her know a fortnight ago,
or more, when first I heard of it. How odd, she shouldn't have told you!”

Not at all, I thought; but I did not say any thing. I felt almost guilty of
having spied too curiously into that tender heart, and I was not going to
speak of its secrets—hidden, Miss Matey believed, from all the world. I
ushered Miss Pole into Miss Matilda's little drawing-room; and then left
them alone. But I was not surprised when Martha came to my bedroom
door, to ask me to go down to dinner alone, for that missus had one of her
bad headaches. She came into the drawing-room at tea-time; but it was
evidently an effort to her; and, as if to make up for some reproachful feeling
against her late sister, Miss Jenkyns, which had been troubling her all the
afternoon, and for which she now felt penitent, she kept telling me how
good and how clever Deborah was in her youth; how she used to settle what

gowns they were to wear at all the parties (faint, ghostly ideas of dim
parties far away in the distance, when Miss Matey and Miss Pole were
young!) and how Deborah and her mother had started the benefit society for
the poor, and taught girls cooking and plain sewing; and how Deborah had
once danced with a lord; and how she used to visit at Sir Peter Arley's, and
try to remodel the quiet rectory establishment on the plans of Arley Hall,
where they kept thirty servants; and how she had nursed Miss Matey
through a long, long illness, of which I had never heard before, but which I
now dated in my own mind as following the dismissal of the suit of Mr.
Holbrook. So we talked softly and quietly of old times, through the long
November evening.

The next day Miss Pole brought us word that Mr. Holbrook was dead. Miss
Matey heard the news in silence; in fact, from the account on the previous
day, it was only what we had to expect. Miss Pole kept calling upon us for
some expression of regret, by asking if it was not sad that he was gone: and
saying,

“To think of that pleasant day last June, when he seemed so well! And he
might have lived this dozen years if he had not gone to that wicked Paris,
where they are always having revolutions.”

She paused for some demonstration on our part. I saw Miss Matey could
not speak, she was trembling so nervously; so I said what I really felt: and
after a call of some duration—all the time of which I have no doubt Miss
Pole thought Miss Matey received the news very calmly—our visitor took
her leave. But the effort at self-control Miss Matey had made to conceal her
feelings—a concealment she practiced even with me, for she has never
alluded to Mr. Holbrook again, although the book he gave her lies with her
Bible on the little table by her bedside; she did not think I heard her when
she asked the little milliner of Cranford to make her caps something like the
Honorable Mrs. Jamieson's, or that I noticed the reply,

“But she wears widows' caps, ma'am?”

“Oh! I only meant something in that style; not widows', of course, but rather
like Mrs. Jamieson's.”

This effort at concealment was the beginning of the tremulous motion of
head and hands which I have seen ever since in Miss Matey.

The evening of the day on which we heard of Mr. Holbrook's death, Miss
Matilda was very silent and thoughtful; after prayers she called Martha
back, and then she stood uncertain what to say.

“Martha!” she said at last; “you are young,” and then she made so long a
pause that Martha, to remind her of her half-finished sentence, dropped a
courtesy, and said:

“Yes, please, ma'am; two-and-twenty last third of October, please, ma'am.”

“And perhaps, Martha, you may some time meet with a young man you
like, and who likes you. I did say you were not to have followers; but if you
meet with such a young man, and tell me, and I find he is respectable, I
have no objection to his coming to see you once a week. God forbid!” said
she, in a low voice, “that I should grieve any young hearts.” She spoke as if
she were providing for some distant contingency, and was rather startled
when Martha made her ready, eager answer:

“Please, ma'am, there's Jim Hearn, and he's a joiner, making three-and-
sixpence a day, and six foot one in his stocking-feet, please ma'am; and if
you'll ask about him to-morrow morning, every one will give him a
character for steadiness; and he'll be glad enough to come to-morrow night,
I'll be bound.”

Though Miss Matey was startled, she submitted to Fate and Love.

Anecdotes Of Monkeys.

During a short stay on the Essequibo, a little monkey of the Jackowai Ris
tribe, in return for some slight attention I had shown him, permitted me so
far to gain his favor and confidence, that he was seldom away from my
person; indeed, he treated me like one mentioned by a distinguished
traveler, which every morning seized on a pig belonging to a mission on the
Orinoco, and rode on its back during the whole day, while it wandered
about the savannahs in search of food. Nothing pleased him better than to
perch on my shoulder, when he would encircle my neck with his long hairy
tail, and accompany me in all my rambles. His tail formed a no very
agreeable neckcloth, with the thermometer above one hundred degrees; but
he seemed so disappointed when I refused to carry him, that it was
impossible to leave him behind. In appearance he was particularly engaging
—squirrel-like in form—with a light brown coat slightly tinged with
yellow, and arms and legs of a reddish cast—pleasingly [pg 465]
contrasting with a pale face, and small black muzzle; the expressive and
merry twinkle of his sparkling black eye betokened fun, roguery, and
intelligence. The Jackowai Ris are a fierce race, and approach the carnivora
in their habits and dispositions. One reason of our intimacy was the
sameness of our pursuits—both being entomologists; but he was a far more
indefatigable insect-hunter than myself. He would sit motionless for hours
among the branches of a flowering shrub or tree, the resort of bees and
butterflies, and suddenly seize them when they little expected danger. Timid
in the presence of strangers, he would usually fly to the branches of a
neighboring tree at their approach, uttering a plaintive cry, more resembling
a bird than an animal. He was apt to be troublesome, even to me, unless I
found him some amusement; this, fortunately, was not difficult; for his
whole attention was soon engrossed by a flower, or by a leaf from my note-
book, which he would industriously pull to pieces, and throw on the surface
of the water, earnestly watching the fragments with his quick black eye, as
they glided away.

At other times, when sitting on my shoulder, he was an incessant plague,
twitching the hairs from my head by twos and threes, filling my ears with
fragments of plants and other rubbish, and taking a malicious pleasure in
holding on by those members when the boat lurched, and he was in danger
of falling. I think it was one of the same family that Humboldt found
capable of recognizing, as resemblances of their originals, even uncolored

zoological drawings; and would stretch out its hand to endeavor to capture
the bees and grasshoppers. I was unable to test the sagacity of my little
comrade, as the only accessible work with engravings was a copy of
Schomburgk's “Fishes of Guiana;” and when I showed him the plates he
manifested no signs of a knowledge of any of his finny compatriots; never,
perhaps, having seen them. He was dreadfully afraid of getting himself wet,
particularly his hands and feet; in this respect showing a very different
disposition to a large long-haired black monkey, belonging to a family
settled a short distance from our residence.

This animal—an object of the greatest terror to the little Jackowinki, from
his having caught him one day and ducked him in the river—was one of the
most tractable and docile I ever remember having met. He was in the habit
of accompanying his master in all his fishing and shooting expeditions,
taking his allotted seat in the canoe, and plying his small paddle for hours
together with the utmost gravity and composure; all the while keeping
excellent time, and being never “out of stroke.” Like his companions, he
would now and then dip the handle of his paddle in the water, to destroy the
squeaking grate of the dry surface, and again would lean over the side and
wash his hands. His domestic habits were perfectly human. The first thing
every morning he cleansed his teeth, by taking a mouthful of water, and
using his finger as a tooth-brush; like the other members of the family,
whom he also imitated in their daily bath in the river. Perhaps one at least of
these peculiarities was not entirely imitative, as a credible authority
(Captain Stedman, in his “Narrative of an Expedition to Surinam”) assures
us that he once saw a monkey at the water's edge, rinsing his mouth, and
appearing to clean his teeth with his fingers.

As for my little friend, I intended to bring him home; but the day before my
departure he suddenly decamped. We were taking our usual trip up the
creek, and I was just thinking of returning, when, on rounding a sharp bend
in the tortuous channel, I perceived two Jackowinkis sitting on a branch
about twenty yards distant, as yet unaware of our vicinity, and from their
chattering and grimaces seemingly engaged in some matrimonial squabble.
Anxious to obtain a specimen for stuffing, I fired at one, which proved to be
the male, who dropped to the ground.

When he saw his brother fall, he seemed instantly to understand that I was a
murderer. He took immediate revenge. He sprang to my shoulder, tore a
handful of hair from my head, and swiftly clambered away among the
overhanging branches. When I recovered from surprise at this unexpected
attack, he had paused in his flight; and, with his face turned toward me, was
grinning, showing his sharp little teeth, and throwing down glances of
fierceness and hate. In another instant he was pursuing the female, whose
plaintive twitterings were distinctly audible, as she scampered away among
the trees. In the course of time, he no doubt managed to console the widow;
and, free from all shackles and restraints, is probably, at this moment,
quietly enjoying a married life in his native woods.

The Mountain Torrent.

I.

My family, by the paternal side, was originally of Berne, in Switzerland,
whence a branch of it removed to the Milanese, to improve its fortunes. The
name of Reding—well-known in the Cantons—was sustained with credit by
my father. He inherited a thriving mill and farm, about a quarter of a league
from the straggling village and venerable Castle of St. Michael, within sight
of the Tyrolese Alps. Traveling to Zurich, where he had distant connections,
he returned with a companion who weaned him from the desire of
wandering any more.

The Castle of St. Michael, with the estate on which our little property was
situated, belonged to an Austrian noble, who managed it by deputy, and
lived in courtly splendor at Vienna. Count Mansfeldt was equitably
represented by his steward, Engel; and under him, our house enjoyed
prosperity from the days of my grandsire.

I had but one sister; my mother was the sole superintendent of her
education; she thought the feminine mind, so susceptible of impressions,
should never be spontaneously consigned to foreign culture. Katherine was
worthy of her preceptress. It is not for me to dilate upon her excellence—a
portrait by my hand might be deemed [pg 466] the glowing creation of a
brother's fondness. It is enough to mention the strength of our attachment. I
was two years her senior; and when her age qualified her for sharing in
childish pastimes, she was the welcome partner of all my amusements. I
showered into her lap the first flowers of spring, and brought her the wild-
strawberry from heights where few would venture. In her friendship, I
reposed the confidence of ripening boyhood—frequently were the
overflowings of a sanguine temperament repressed by her mildness. With
innocent wiles she endeavored to vail my errors from parental eyes; when I
did incur displeasure, her accustomed gayety was gone, and the voice that
recalled her truant smile, was ever that which pardoned the offender.

II.

I was entering my twentieth year, when our situation underwent an
important change. Our landlord was gathered to his ancestors, having
bequeathed his Lombardy estate to his second son, Count Rainer. Engel, the
good old steward, was soon after dismissed from office, and retired, with
the fruits of faithful service, to his native town in Carniola.

Count Rainer was a captain in the imperial army. He was with his regiment
at Pavia when informed of his father's death. Devolving his authority on an
emancipated sergeant of hussars, the purveyor of his libertine pleasures, he
dispatched him to St. Michael to wring money from the tenantry, and
prepare for his reception.

Ludolf was a swaggering bravo, emulous, at middle age, of the vices of
profligate youth. On his arrival, he circulated a pompous intimation that he
came vested with full powers to treat with the vassals of the count, and
renew their engagements.

My sister had gone to the village to make purchases, and I left the mill at
vesper chime with the intention of meeting her. The path was abrupt, and
little frequented. I was cherishing discontent at the husbandman's unvaried
existence, when I was roused by the distant accents of a female in distress.
They were clearly distinguishable, and I rushed to the quarter whence they
proceeded. In a corner of an open spot, backed by a deep ditch, fenced with
luxuriant underwood, Katherine was keeping a man, unknown to me, at
bay: he was above the middle size, and in his beard and costume affected
the fashion of the military. He faced me as I approached, and my sister, with
disordered dress and agitated frame, flew to my side. Defenseless as I was,
my first impulse was to chastise the ruffian, though he wore a sabre; but
consideration for the terrified girl, who clung to me imploringly, induced
me to forego my purpose. We had not receded many paces, when Katherine

relinquished her hold, and uttered a warning cry: the hand of violence was
already at my throat; and a harsh voice, unsteady from rage or
intemperance, demanded why a contemptible slave dared to interfere with
the representative of Count Rainer.

Unequal to my opponent in bulk and inert force, I was far above him in
activity and the resources of a vigorous constitution. A sudden jerk freed me
from his hold, and a well-applied push sent him reeling to the verge of the
ditch. He drew his weapon with a rapidity on which I had not calculated;
Katherine's coolness saved my life: she arrested his arm in its sweep. Ere he
could disengage himself, I collected all my energy for one buffet, and laid
him supine in the reservoir of mud.

III.

Count Rainer was greeted at St. Michael with the show of rustic rejoicing
usual on the appearance of a new master. He was accompanied by a train of
riotous associates. The roar of Bacchanalian merriment shook the dusky
halls of his patrimonial fabric, which, in the blaze of unwonted festivity,
seemed to have renewed its youth. Naught, from the evening of the
rencounter, had we heard or seen of Ludolf. His rudeness might have
originated in the coarse jocularity of a soldier, stimulated by too fervid an
application to the bottle. Prudence required that I should abstain from
needlessly irritating a man whose enmity might mar my father's
arrangements with his lord: I therefore avoided the chance of collision.

I was strolling about the fields with my gun on my shoulder, when a pet
pigeon of Katherine's whirred past me, pursued by a hawk. I fired at the
bird of prey, which dropped in an adjoining meadow. Springing across the
intervening hedge, I found myself in the presence of a group of mounted
sportsmen and their attendants. One of the horsemen was examining the
dead hawk; his attention was directed toward me by a retainer, in whose
brawny proportions, husky voice, and ferocious mustaches, I recognized my
adversary, Ludolf.

My gun was demanded, in the name of Count Rainer: I refused to surrender
it. The party formed a circle around, pinioned me, and wrested it from me,
ere I could attempt resistance. “Mr. Steward,” said the count, “you may now
acquaint your friend with the consequences of destroying a nobleman's
falcon.”

The ready villain and his servile followers dragged me to the earth; they
profaned my person by stripes. When they left me in my abasement, the air
felt pestilent with their brutal laughter.

I lay with my face to the greensward long after their departure. My brain
was eddying in a hell-whirl. I could have welcomed the return of chaos, that
the circumstance of my shame might be obliterated in the clash of
contending elements. Had the sun been blotted from the heavens, and the
summer earth turned to blackness and desolation, I should have thought
them fit and natural occurrences. I raised my burning brow; but the orb of
day was riding high in his glory, and the meadow-grass and wild flowers
were fresh and fragrant as if they had not witnessed the act of degradation. I
discovered that a stranger had been regarding me with a vigilant eye. I
confronted him, and darted at him a devouring [pg 467] glance; his firm,
contemplative look remained unaltered. Placing a hand on my shoulder, he
said, “Albert Reding, consider me your friend.”

“I know you not,” I answered, “nor care to know you.” He smiled
benevolently:

“Young man, I am no Austrian. I shall be with you to-morrow.”

IV.

The stranger kept his word: on the ensuing day he came to our dwelling.
Making, he said, a tour through the north of Italy, the picturesque scenery
tempted him to prolong his sojourn at St. Michael. In his excursions, he had
chanced to hold random converse with my father, whom he professed to
value as the worthy descendant of an independent and intelligent people.

I had forborne to grieve my family by the story of my disgrace, nor had it
yet been detailed to them by the officious communicativeness of pretended
friends. Our visitor made no allusion to it, but expatiated very agreeably on
topics of general interest. He described the passes of the Alps with the
accuracy of a mountaineer, and displayed an intimacy with the localities of
the cantons that filled my parents with pleasure and surprise. In pursuit of
knowledge he had traversed the most remarkable sections of the globe; and
his observations, affluent in instruction, proved that his wanderings had
been of a different order from the capricious migrations of sight-seeking
wealth.

The warmth with which I seconded some of his sentiments appeared to
please him. He complimented my father on my education; adding, that the
judgment with which I developed its resources designated me for a wider
sphere of action than belonged to a tiller of the soil of Lombardy. I had been
vain enough to entertain the same opinion; and its confirmation by a
competent authority was balm to my spirit. Gladly I acceded to his request,
of guiding him to the Baron's Font, a romantic cascade, where, to use his
own language, he sighed to offer allegiance to Nature.

My companion noted the peculiarities of the route, and committed to
writing the information I furnished respecting the district. We rested on the
summit of a steep, skirted by the foaming stream of the cascade, beyond

which rose wooded grounds in bold acclivity, mellowing, with their dusky
greenness, the gloomy grandeur of a mouldering tower.

The stranger abruptly adverted to the hateful humiliation of the preceding
day. He descanted on the contumely I had suffered, with a vehement
bitterness that chafed my young blood to flame. I denounced endless
hostility against the count and his minions. He calmly commented on the
futility of the threat. In the frenzy of exasperation, I insinuated the
possibility of resorting to the darkest means of accomplishing revenge. He
replied, that in cooler moments I would spurn the idea of Italian vengeance.
Requiring a pledge of secrecy, he proceeded to point out an honorable mode
of lowering the crest of the oppressor.

“My name,” he said, “is Philippon—my profession, a military engineer, in
the service of the French Republic. The armies of Liberty only await the
capture of Toulon to sever the chains of Italy. I am terminating a secret
journey of observation through Piedmont and the Milanese. Come with me
to Paris, and join the standard of Freedom. In France, no parchment barrier
excludes untitled youth from fame and fortune; draw a blade in her cause,
and relieve the place of your nativity from the thralldom of its petty tyrant.
These brutal and stolid Austrians must be driven to their land of hereditary
bondage—justice demands it. The time has gone by for insulted and injured
Humanity to shed tears in secret. Five dreary years I pined in the dismal
solitudes of the Bastile—I saw it fall, amid the curses of my countrymen;
and never shall the spirit of a liberated nation taste repose, until every
stronghold of remorseless power is patent to the winds of heaven as yon
grim old fortress, where the Count Rainers of the past outraged with
impunity the natural equality of man!”

The majesty of generous indignation irradiated his brow: the eloquent
thunders of the Roman forum seemed to roll around me. I agreed to attend
him to the capital of the young Republic.

V.

Bent on entering the field of martial adventure, I anticipated much difficulty
in obtaining the concurrence of my father. A lover of tranquillity, he had
sickened at the sanguinary measures that had crimsoned the cradle of the
French Revolution. Yielding also to age and infirmity, he had been
accustomed to the prospect of resigning to me the chief management of our
affairs. The narrative of my shame, however, which led him to tremble for
the consequences, determined him against opposing my departure. Of my
military project, and the pursuits of my patron, I made no disclosure—I
barely stated the fact, that he had promised to provide for me at Paris, and
proposed, in the mean time, giving me employment as an amanuensis.

Sorrow and joy are twin daughters of affection. Notwithstanding the
excitement of curiosity and ambition, reluctantly and despondingly I
crossed our humble threshold. I went away at night, and this added to the
melancholy character of the separation. My mother was unwell, and at her
bedside I received her blessing. The features of my gentle-natured sister
gave dim and pallid testimony to the fullness of her affliction. When I had
parted with my parents, she escorted me to the extremity of the orchard.
“Oh, Albert!” were the only words she had power to utter; and her face
looked so mournful—so heart-appealing, in the moonlight—that to desert
her smote me as a sin. One embrace, and I bounded off like a chamois—
then paused, till weeping relieved my soul—Katherine! Katherine!

VI.

I remained about a year at Paris in the house of my patron. Toulon had
fallen, and the army of Italy had commenced operations by a successful
movement on the Sardinian frontier. Profiting [pg 468] by the opportunity I
possessed of studying the theory of the military art, I was rewarded with a
commission in a regiment of the line—one of those destined for the
invasion of the Milanese. I received, with alacrity, the order to proceed to
Nice. I was shocked and disgusted by the dreary spectacle of civil broil, and
I thirsted for distinction. The memory of wrong also rankled in my bosom,
and in my dreams I planted the revolutionary banner on the battlements of
St. Michael, and heard myself hailed in the halls of the insolent Austrian
with the acclamations due to a hero.

I joined my regiment; but a government weakened by vacillations in its
form, and dissensions in the capital, permitted the army, with which my
hopes were associated, to languish ill-appointed and inactive. Instead of
running a career of glory, it was forced to contend with the most depressing
privations. In my despondency, a long-delayed letter arrived from my
father. Its contents were almost limited to the earnest request, that I would
immediately hasten home.

Its emphatic urgency, unaccompanied by explanation, assured me that all
went not well. I would fain have obeyed the summons, but it was
impracticable. The Directory, established in authority, ordered the army of
Italy to the field. General Bonaparte, an officer in his twenty-sixth year,
marshaled the way to the Alps.

Napoleon's campaigns in 1796 are familiar to all Europe. It was my fortune
to be present in the most remarkable engagements, and to escape without a
wound. When Wurmser, after repeated defeats, succeeded in recruiting his
forces in the Tyrol, a strong body of our troops, headed by the commander-

in-chief, advanced against a division of 20,000 Austrians stationed at
Roveredo. Our line of march lay through the district of my birth. A few
hours before we were in motion I was summoned to the quarters of the
general. It was the well-known characteristic of this extraordinary man
scrupulously to ascertain the extent of his resources, even to the
qualifications of an individual soldier.

Aware of my knowledge of the country he was about to penetrate, he
wished to make it subservient to his purpose. He questioned me as to the
correctness of some local information, which I perceived had been derived
from the documents of Philippon. Satisfied on these points, he sportively
inquired, if I had any dislike to act as his herald to my old neighbors. I
related my obligations to our German superior, and he promised me ample
powers for discharging them in full.

We were evidently unexpected. No artificial obstacle opposed our progress,
and we proceeded with unexampled celerity. Our advanced posts were only
separated from St. Michael by a few miles of broken ground, when I was
dispatched with a detachment to surprise it. The troops halted in a chestnut
grove, about half a league from the mill, while I, grappling a fowling-piece,
assuming a light hunting-cap, and covering my uniform with an ordinary
cloak, went forth to reconnoitre the place, and to provide for the safety of
my relatives.

I skirted round the village and castle, which I found were occupied by a
company of Hungarian infantry under Count Rainer. Not anticipating the
irruption of an enemy into their secluded fastness, camp indulgences had
relaxed order. My informer, a poor peasant, seemed afraid of confiding to a
stranger his opinion of the count and his followers. I asked concerning my
family, but with the name of Reding he was unacquainted.

It was the beginning of September. There had been a continuance of
unusually sultry weather, and the melting of the mountain snows had
swelled the stream at St. Michael to an impetuous torrent. Twilight was
approaching when I reached a sheltered position opposite the castle. The
waters dashed furiously against the base of the building, and the crazy
supports of the antiquated bridge quivered like a harpstring.

I resolved on a nocturnal attack, and was about to seek a passing interview
with the dear domestic circle, when, looking toward the castle, I saw what
stayed my step. A female ran wildly to the stream, pursued by some
menials, in the rear of whom, on horseback, came the count their master.
The fugitive cleared the bridge just as her pursuers gained it. At that
moment the centre of the infirm structure gave way to the torrent.
Concealed among the trees, I perceived the female on bended knees,
distractedly blessing God for her deliverance; and I knew that it was
Katherine, my only—my beloved sister!

I fired a shot at him who had been foremost in the chase—the infamous
Ludolf—as he clambered up a remnant of the shattered bridge. He stood
unhurt amidst the group that surveyed me, while I sheltered the dove of my
boyhood in my bosom. In the confusion I exposed my uniform; the alarm
was given, and every instant became precious. I supported Katherine until
out of sight of the foe. “Fly!” I cried; “fly to our parents, dear sister! tell
them I shall bring glad tidings in the morning!”

I counseled in vain. The sense of injury had unsettled her mind—she hung
helplessly upon me—her lips moved, but I could distinguish nothing of
what she spoke, save the repetition of the words, “Home! I have no
home!”—Oh, God! she was sadly altered!

A bugle echoed among the cliffs. I bore her to a cavern, the discovery of my
youth, and wrapped her in my cloak. Hurrying, by familiar paths, with a
speed I had never before exerted, I rejoined my associates.

VII.

An intricate and circuitous track brought us at midnight to the isolated
church of St. Michael, commanding the village and the narrow road to the
castle. We crouched in the church-yard, until every sound ceased, and the
lights that had blazed in different directions were no longer visible. Leaving
part of my force to intercept the communication with the village, I led the
remainder to a point of the fortress which I had scaled in my youthful
rambles.

[pg 469]
The pacing of the sentinels, and the noisy vigils of the count and his guests,
were clearly audible as I descended the ivied wall. My party followed, one
by one, and our success would have been signally complete, but for the
accidental discharge of a musket. This was answered by a volley from the
guard, the din of arms, and the hasty gathering of a tumultuous body of
defenders. Ordering my men to keep close and follow me, we pressed
forward to a private door that opened into the body of the pile.

This barrier was quickly shattered by a shower of balls, and in a second the
great hall resounded with the groans of the dying and the shouts of the
triumphant. In that arena of slaughter I was collected as I am now. Once had
Rainer's bloated visage confronted me in the fray, but the baleful meteor
vanished, and bootless to me was the issue of the conflict, until blade or
bullet did its work on him and his subordinate.

The hall gave indications of a carousal. The red wine streaming from
flagons overturned in struggle, mingled with the life-drops of the
wassailers. Death derived a more appalling aspect from the relics of recent
revelry. Some intoxicated wretches had been bayoneted with the goblets in
their hands. One had fallen backward on the hearth above the burning
embers; he was mortally wounded, and the blood gushed freely in the

flames. I stooped to raise him from his bed of torture. The streaks of gore
did not disguise the lineaments of Ludolf. The reprobate had closed his
reckoning with mortality.

Victory was ours, but discipline was at an end; I could with difficulty
muster sentinels for the night; the cellars were ransacked, and weariness
and intemperance soon produced their effects. Sending confidential
messengers to attend to my sister's safety, and convey intelligence to my
father, I prepared to await the dawn of morning.

Feverish from anxiety, I felt no inclination to grant my wearied limbs
repose. My brain was racked with the thought of Katherine, and
apprehension for my parents. I had seen enough to convince me that Rainer
had done his worst. What confederate demon had enabled him to escape
me?

I paced from post to post, execrating the sluggish march of time. Leaning
over an eminence near the broken bridge, I listened to the turbulent music
of the waters. A subterraneous opening cut in the rocky soil below
communicated with the vaults of the castle. Hearing the echo of a foot-fall,
I bent cautiously over the outlet. A lamp glimmered beneath. A muffled
figure raised it aloft to guide its egress, then extinguished it hastily. The
light fell on the face of the count.

I grasped his cloak as he emerged, but, slipping it from his shoulders, he
retreated toward a shelving wood-walk on the margin of the stream. Had he
gained it, the darkness must have saved him. Both my pistols missed fire. I
outstripped in the race, and bore him back to the very edge of the ravine. He
made a thrust at me with his sword. I neither paused for a trial of skill, nor
attempted to ward off the weapon; the butt-end of a pistol found its way to
his forehead; not a sound passed his lips; down he went—down—down—
passively bounding over the jagged declivity, till a heavy plash told that he
was whirling with the torrent.

Vengeance was satisfied: I recoiled involuntarily from the scene of the
encounter. Suddenly arose an explosion, as if a volcano had torn up the
foundation of the castle: I was felled to the earth ere I could speculate upon
the cause.

VIII.

My campaigns were over. Rainer had laid a train, and fired the powder
magazine of his captured hold. The bravest of my men perished; and I,
crushed beneath a fragment of the toppling towers, lived to curse the art that
returned me mutilated and miserable, to a world in which I was henceforth
to have no portion.

I left the hospital a phantom, and set forth on a pilgrimage, the performance
of which was the only business that remained to me in life. The tide of
battle had ebbed from St. Michael, when I crawled up its steep—the church
and castle were blackened ruins—the habitations of the villagers roofless
and deserted—the mill a shapeless mass of timber and stones. Our orchard
was unfolding the buds of spring—I fancied that the hoary apple-trees wore
the aspect of friends—the voice of singing floated on my ear, as I neared the
dwelling of my infancy, and the fountain of my heart re-opened.

Close to the spot where our pretty porch once stood, a matron, in the garb of
extreme penury, was bending over the trampled remains of a plot of
flowers. Her features were only partially revealed, but the mountain melody
she sang could not be mistaken—I fell at my mother's feet! Shading back
the hair from my scarred temples, she asked me if I had come from her
children!

Mercy was vouchsafed to her and to me. She soon slumbered with the clods
of the valley. My father had died, ere my departure from France; and the
story of our injuries from the Austrian lightened the burden of remorse for
the shedding of blood. I have discovered no trace of Katherine since I
quitted her at the cave.

A Masked Ball At Vienna.

It is a bitterly cold night, and the snow which has been for three days
tumbling down upon the roofs and pavements of Vienna, tumbles down
upon us still. The theatres, which get through their performances by half-
past nine, are closed already; and there is a lull now in the muffled streets. I
mean to go out as a muffled man, and use the ticket I have bought for a
Masked Ball at the palace. The sale of tickets for such balls, which take
place now and then during the winter, raises enormous sums, which are
applied to charitable purposes, so that the luxury of the rich is made to
minister, in this case, also to the comforts of the poor.

Here I stand ankle-deep in snow, and look up at the palace; all the windows
on the first story are being lighted up, and cold gentlemen converging
toward the door from all parts, are the members of Strauss's band. And now
lights [pg 470] have begun to flash about the streets, and masks are
beginning to arrive. Splendid carriages of the nobility; and positively some
of the imperial family do not disdain to be among the first arrivals! The
beau from the suburbs, in a light fiacre. Actresses and officers in their
broughams. Sledges from the country, drawn by merry little horses, frisking
through the snow, and jingling bells over their harness. A chaos of lights, a
coachman, and the long poles of sedan chairs in the way of a chaos of legs,
hats, shoulders, coach-tops, and every thing else, powdered with snow that
tumbles silently and steadily upon the scene of riot. A crush of revelers
upon the staircase. Half-past eleven; all the most important people having
now entered—except myself—it is quite time for me to follow to the ball-
room.

A vast room. Think of the Great Exhibition, if you want a notion of it; and
take off a discount for exaggeration. Walk to the end of this room, and a
door opens into another ball-room, almost twice as large. In each of these
great halls, there are raised orchestras, in which the bands are stationed; and
when one band ceases playing, another is prepared immediately to begin.
Galleries, to which you ascend by flights of stairs at each end, run round
both the rooms; and into these galleries open innumerable ice and supper-

rooms, passages, and out-of-the-way cells, wherein you may lose yourself,
but not your company. Masks are to be found sitting in every corner;
wherever a mask is, there is mischief.

You see nothing vulgar, no rude costume, no monstrous noses, no absurd
pairs of spectacles, or woolly wigs. You hear no boisterous shouts of mirth;
beautiful music reigns incessantly supreme over all other sounds. Only the
ladies are disguised; their faces are hidden behind elegant little black silk
masks, and they vie with each other in the costliness and beauty of their
costumes and dominoes. The men are all in simple evening dress; they walk
about, defenseless game, and yield sport in abundance to the dames and
damsels. Most of the ministers are here—grave, steady gentlemen, with
bald heads or gray hair. Each of them is surrounded by a swarm of masks—
princesses, perhaps—milliners, perhaps—and some of them are evidently
making wry mouths at what they are obliged to hear. This is the time for
home truths. The ladies at a masked ball make good use of their disguise,
and scatter about their wholesome mischief abundantly.

A vision in black and gold beckons to me. I place myself at her disposal.
“You are an Englishman,” the vision says; “I know you.” “How, madam?”
“By your awkwardness.” “Are Britons awkward?” “Yes, and wearisome.
Go, you are not amusing. Take care of your gloves; they are so large that I
fear they will fall off.” The vision laughs at me and vanishes. I have a secret
or two which I don't mean to print. I did think that those mysteries were
locked up in my bosom. If you ever happen to be at Vienna, with some
secrets in your keeping, and desire to know whether you hold them safe, go
to a Masked Ball. Mocking voices, behind black silk masks, will very much
surprise you with some samples of the penetration proper to a sex which
seems, in Vienna, to be made of Blue Beard wives. Twenty ladies honor me
with minute details of the contents of one apartment in my mind, which I
had considered quite a patent safe, with a fastening like that of the box in
the talisman of Oromanes.

The night wears on; at three o'clock the instrumental music ceases, but the
music of the mischievous and merry tattlers still continues to be ringing in
all ears, and making them to tingle. Every man is destined to go home
abundantly informed and criticised upon the subject of his foibles. Until six

o'clock, supping, and taking tea and coffee, will continue, and the relish for
amusement will be as keen as ever. Nobody is dancing—nobody has
danced; that is no part of the business. At length, the multitude has
dwindled down to a few stragglers; the remainder of the cloaks, and coats,
and wrappers, are brought out and scattered, as so many hints to their
possessors, in the middle of the great room. We immediately dive and
scramble for them. In another hour, the lights are put out; all is over, and I
travel home over the snow.

The Ornithologist.

I was still young, when a sudden reverse of fortune deprived me of a kind
father and affluence at the same time. A home was offered for my
acceptance by Mrs. Priestly, a widow lady, whom I had never seen since my
infancy, distance and circumstances having combined to effect this
separation. Mrs. Priestly was not only my godmother, but she had been the
earliest chosen friend of my own lamented mother, and now came forward
to extend succor to the destitute orphan. In former years, I remembered to
have heard that she had suffered deep sorrow, from the loss of her only
child, a fine boy, who was heir to a princely fortune, independent of his
mother's considerable possessions. There were rumors afloat, at the period
of this bereavement, of a peculiarly distressing nature—strange, half-
suppressed whispers of some fearful accident that had rendered the widow
childless; but the memory of these things had passed away, and Mrs.
Priestly's first despair and agony had settled down to a resigned melancholy.
On her fine countenance premature age was stamped, a smile seldom
visible, while her mourning garb was never cast aside; she was a lifelong
mourner.

The outward aspect of Lodimer—so Mrs. Priestly's domain was called—
was but little in accordance with the sad heart of its owner, for a more

cheerful or animated scene I had rarely witnessed. The villa, surrounded by
colonnades, stood on the side of a gently swelling hill, at the base of which
flowed a broad and sparkling river, on which numerous boats and
picturesque-looking barges were continually passing and repassing. Roses
and thatch, light French windows and exotics, trimly-kept pleasure-grounds,
slopping [pg 471] down to the water's edge, drooping willows and silver
birches were accessories, doubtless, to produce an effect of combined
elegance and grace, while on the opposite banks richly wooded hills were
studded with white cottages, glancing in the sunshine; though even during
rainy seasons Lodimer never looked gloomy, an indescribable air of
joyousness and hilarity pervading it. The calamity which overshadowed
Mrs. Priestly's existence had not occurred at this pleasant home, but at the
distant seat of the widow's brother, Mr. Lovell, of Lovell Castle, where she
and her son were on a visit at the time; and still Mrs. Priestly continued to
pay an annual visit thither, never leaving Lodimer save for that purpose, but
leading a life of extreme seclusion. I had the satisfaction of believing that
my society tended to enhance the comfort of Mrs. Priestly; who, with the
utmost delicacy and kindness, lavished a thousand nameless attentions—
trifling in themselves, but keenly felt by the dependent; calling me her
adopted daughter, while her candor demanded and received my grateful
thanks, for I fully appreciated the excellent motives actuating Mrs. Priestly's
avowal. She wished to prevent false expectations on my part, and yet to set
at rest all anxiety respecting the future; informing me, that the bulk of her
wealth she designed to bequeath to her nephew, Mr. Lovell's son, but that a
moderate provision was secured for her dear orphan god-daughter. But my
agitation gave place to surprise, when Mrs. Priestly continued, addressing
me, “You have sense and discretion beyond your years, Evelin, my love,
and when you came to reside here with me, I determined first to ascertain if
this were the case, ere I confided my secret to your keeping—for I have a
secret—which may not be mentioned at Lovell Castle, when you
accompany me thither shortly. A few miles hence, an individual resides, to
whom I intend shortly to introduce you. He is a most unfortunate person,
and desires the strictest privacy; but Mr. Edwin is not unhappy, because he
knows the 'peace within which passeth show,' while his intellectual
attainments are of the highest order. But, in case you should weave a
romance, Evelin, out of these details,” added Mrs. Priestly, faintly smiling,
“it is but fair I warn you, that romance and Edwin may not be coupled

together, for he is—alas! poor fellow—an unsightly and deformed creature;
his captivations are those only of the heart and mind—in this he shines pre-
eminent. Again let me remind you, my love, not to allude to Mr. Edwin in
conversation; forget him altogether, except when you speak to me. I know
that you are not tormented with feminine curiosity, or I would tell you to
ask no questions. This is my secret, Evelin, which I fearlessly confide to
your keeping.”

However, Mrs. Priestly did me more than justice, for though I certainly
endeavored to indulge no idle speculations on the forbidden topic, yet I was
not apathetic enough to forget it; more especially after accompanying Mrs.
Priestly to see her mysterious friend, whose ménage, to say nothing of
himself, might have excused a far more insensible person than I was for
feeling a strong interest and sympathy. Surrounded by thick woods on all
sides save one, which opened toward the same river that washed the
emerald turf of Lodimer, we came to a small spot of ground resembling a
“clearing,” and I fancied we were transported to those wild western lands I
had so often read of—the old ivy-covered hunting-lodge in the midst adding
much to the real beauty of the picture, though detracting somewhat from its
savage charms. Quantities of feathered tribes were strutting about within the
inclosure, or enjoying themselves in various attitudes of indolence or
security; an immense aviary extended down one side of the clearing, fitted
up with the view of affording as much solace and liberty of movement as
possible to the inmates. The whole place seemed alive with fowls of the air,
and we beheld a human form within the wire-work of the aviary, literally
covered with birds, small and large, wherever they could find a resting-
place—on head, arms, or back—and many more were fluttering and
crowding over and around him, as Mr. Edwin—for it was he—proceeded to
dispense food to his loving flock. Presently he made his escape, and
approached us, with a jay perched on one shoulder and a magpie on the
other, appearing to hold whispering discourse with their benefactor, who
fondly caressed and chirruped to them in turn. He was of middling stature,
perceptibly and painfully deformed; but his countenance was such an one as
Raphael would have loved to portray—holy, placid, and spiritual, beyond
any mortal face I have looked upon before or since. His voice was
inexpressibly touching and melodious; it thrilled the heart of the listener, for
there was an intonation of sadness in its tone, though the words were

cheerful, as he cordially and warmly welcomed us. We followed him into a
long, low-roofed apartment, the windows of which looked out on woodland
vistas, and on all sides, from floor to ceiling, it was lined with books, and
cases containing stuffed birds, for Mr. Edwin was devoted to the study of
ornithology, and almost rivaled Audubon in patient watching and research.
A married couple, of quiet and orderly habits, formed the domestic
establishment at Ivy Lodge; and the profound stillness and solitude of this
sylvan retreat was unbroken, save by the cooing of the cushat dove, the
song-birds' varied notes, the sonorous hooting of the white owl up among
the eaves, and the occasional screams of the splendid peacocks ringing
through the greenwood glades.

Here was the paradise of the feathered creatures, here they were all fostered
and protected; and Mr. Edwin had attained the mysterious art of taming the
wild denizens of the woods as surely and wonderfully, if not quite as
rapidly, as did that celebrated Arab horse-leech exert his skill on
quadrupeds, whispering in the ear of vicious and hitherto untamable steeds,
who immediately became docile and subdued. Even shy and stately swans
knew this lonely clearing [pg 472] on the river banks, and frequently came
to be fed by Mr. Edwin's gentle hand; the swans had a nest here among the
reeds, and broods of cygnets were reared in this haven of peace. Mr. Edwin
had made many beautiful copies of rare birds, which he could not otherwise
preserve, the colors being brilliant and true to nature, as well as the size of
each specimen; and I felt not a little delighted when he accepted my timid
offer of assistance in this branch of his study, for I was afraid that my poor
efforts would fall far short of his masterly productions. But Mrs. Priestly re-
assured me, and she told Mr. Edwin that he had found a valuable coadjutor,
for bird-painting had always been quite a passion with me—a strange taste,
perhaps, for a young lady, though I know not why it should be considered
more out of the way than copying flowers from nature. However, I exerted
myself to the utmost, and succeeded well, for he gave my drawings
unqualified approbation, and was eloquent in thanking me. I am sure the
amiable recluse read my heart at once, and saw how eagerly and gratefully I
availed myself of this opportunity, trifling as it was, of gratifying Mrs.
Priestly, to whom I owed so much; for her affection toward Mr. Edwin
rendered attentions bestowed on him personally felt and acknowledged by
her. This similarity of taste, together with our mutual love and veneration

for Mrs. Priestly, induced that kindly communion between Mr. Edwin and
myself which afterward ripened into a lasting friendship, cemented by time.
He was, indeed, wise unto salvation. Learned not only in this world's lore,
but in that wisdom which maketh not ashamed, he bore his daily cross most
meekly, and yet most manfully. Deeply alive to the beautiful, keenly
sensitive on all points, tender-hearted and affectionate, he lived alone in the
woodland solitude, not, I was convinced, from any morbid disinclination to
encounter his kind on account of his personal affliction (he was too humble
and good for that), but from some unknown and mysterious cause, some
hidden sorrow, which rendered solitude in a retreat like this desirable. At
Lodimer, I never gazed on the gay and sparkling river, without
remembering that it flowed onward toward the swan's nest among the reeds.
I never gazed on the thick, rich woods, or heard the wood-pigeon's cooing
across the waters at the hushed evening hour, without a sensation of
tranquillity and peace stealing over my spirit, as fancy pictured the lonely
lodge, the soft twittering around it, and the dense shadows beyond.

I obeyed Mrs. Priestly, and never asked a question concerning Mr. Edwin,
but I pondered much on this interesting subject; and whenever my thoughts
turned away from the vanities of this world, they always rested with
satisfaction on the ornithologist.

As the time drew nigh for our departure to Lovell Castle, I observed a
degree of restlessness on Mr. Edwin which I had not hitherto noticed, and
frequent gloomy abstraction, which he vainly endeavored to shake off in
our presence. Mrs. Priestly often conversed alone with him, when traces of
agitation were visible on her countenance, and tears on his; and when she
bade him farewell, these words lingered on his lips—“Tell dear Mildred
how happy I am.”

Lovell Castle was a dark, frowning pile, bearing an ancient date, while
some portions were more antiquated still, and had fallen into disuse. It was
a real castle of the olden time; I had often read of such with interest and
delight, but now I could explore for myself. Here were dungeons and
vaulted chambers, trap-doors and loop-holes, intricate passages, secret
hiding-places, and curious old oaken chests, battlements and turrets, carved

work and tapestry, banqueting hall and chapel—in short, all the appendages
necessary for romance in feudal days.

The family consisted of Mr. Lovell, Mildred, his eldest daughter by a first
wife, and Harold and Rose, the children of the second Mrs. Lovell, who had
died when Rose was an infant. Mildred was tenderly beloved by Mrs.
Priestly; and, as she never quitted her hypochondriacal father, it was
principally to see this dear niece that the widow left her quiet home on the
margin of Lodimer's blue waters. I was absolutely startled by the
extraordinary and striking likeness between the ornithologist and Mildred
Lovell—the same placid, sweet expression of countenance, the same gentle,
winning manners, too. While in unobtrusive performance of her duties
toward God and man, this good daughter and sister journeyed onward
through life, ministering to the comfort and well-being of all, but without
exacting a meed of praise or a single glance of admiration. Mildred was
nobody at Lovell Castle; but, had she been absent, her absence would have
been universally bewailed, and her value known: they were perhaps too
used to the blessing to appreciate it, even as the sun shines day after day,
and we do not remark it as any thing unusual.

Rose was a volatile, thoughtless girl, yet affectionate and kind-hearted
withal, and dearly loved her elder sister, who had indeed filled the place of
a mother to her. Rose had elastic, unvarying spirits, which were not
unwelcome in that dull old place, and kept the inmates from stagnation. She
and Harold were the father's darlings, though all Mr. Lovell's hope and
pride centred in his son. Pre-eminently beautiful in person, active and
graceful, Harold Lovell was born the same year as his deceased cousin,
Jocelyn Priestly, and the youths had strongly resembled each other, not only
in person but in disposition. The partial parents had not, perhaps, read those
dispositions truthfully, or in both their children they might have traced evil
propensities, which went far to counterbalance the good—revengeful
passions, and a proneness to selfish indulgence, which not all their brilliant
acquirements and feats of gallant prowess could conceal from a close
observer of character. They were at the same school together, and at Lovell
Castle for the vacation, when that sad catastrophe took place which plunged
the family in irremediable [pg 473] affliction. Mr. Lovell, who had always
been a nervous, ailing man, never recovered the shock, and latterly he had

sunk into complete indolence, and left the care and management of his
affairs entirely to Harold, who, however, ill-fulfilled his duties. The
aversion which Mrs. Priestly entertained toward her nephew, and which she
vainly strove to conceal, had once been the source of painful contention
between Mr. Lovell and his sister, though now it had settled down into a
silent grief never alluded to by either of them. All these particulars I had
heard from Rose; and much I was amazed at Mrs. Priestly's conduct,
coupled with the avowal she had made to me respecting the disposal of her
property in favor of her nephew; but I knew her to be a just and strong-
minded woman, and felt sure there was some mystery connected with these
family details, which Rose was bursting to disclose, the first convenient
opportunity. But I gave her no encouragement to do so, for I thought that,
had Mrs. Priestly wished me to know the secret motives by which she was
actuated, her confidence would have been already bestowed; and it seemed
a breach of trust, or dishonorable, to gain the knowledge by other means.
The sweet benignity of Mildred Lovell, her untiring patience and unaffected
cheerfulness, as well as the strong resemblance of feature, continually
reminded me of Mr. Edwin, and I pondered often on the parting words
which I had heard him address to Mrs. Priestly—“Tell dear Mildred how
happy I am.”

And what was Mildred to Mr. Edwin? Wherefore was he exiled and alone?
What had he done that his name was forbidden to be spoken at Lovell?
These ideas constantly haunted me, despite my determination to exclude
such idle questionings concerning the mysterious affair. Rose sometimes
communicated some portion of her own gay spirit to me: we were thrown
much together, for Mildred was constantly occupied with her invalid parent,
and Mrs. Priestly shared the duties of her beloved niece. But I often desired
the solitude which was more congenial to my turn of mind, though it was
not always easy to obtain it, as Rose, from a mistaken kindness, continually
watched my movements, and accompanied me wheresoever I desired to go.
It was impossible to check the affectionate girl in a direct manner; but I
discovered that there was one locality particularly avoided by all the
inmates of the castle, which had fallen into decay, and was seldom
approached by Rose. This was the western wing or turret; and thither,
accordingly, I often bent my steps, in search of quietude, and also of a
magnificent prospect to be viewed from the summit. In this sumptuous

home at Lovell Castle, my thoughts often wandered to Ivy Lodge on
Lodimer's banks, and its lonely occupant, apart from the vanities of life,
contented and cheerful under afflictions which were, I felt sure, of no
common nature. I compared the pious recluse with the heir of Lovell,
toward whom an inexpressible feeling of repugnance reigned in my breast.
Harold was devoted to field sports and the pleasures of the table; he was, in
fact, the real master, consulting only his own time and inclinations on all
occasions. His bloated, though still handsome countenance, evidenced
excess; while a dictatorial manner, as of one unused to reproof or
contradiction, was habitual. A constant restlessness and irritability, a quick
turn of the eye, a wild glance, betokened a mind ill at ease. He was a scoffer
at religion, too, an unkind brother, and an undutiful son to the doating
father, who yet believed and saw no faults in his offspring. Despite her
brother's harshness, Rose, with devoted sisterly affection, extenuated
Harold's conduct, and it was very beautiful to witness her womanly
tenderness and forbearance. It might be that Mildred was the child of
another mother, and that circumstances had somewhat weakened the ties of
blood; but notwithstanding her general kindness of demeanor toward all,
including Harold, there was a perceptible shade of coldness when
addressing him. She never volunteered an embrace, to be cast off, like the
persevering, warm-hearted Rose; she never clung to her brother, praying
him to remain at home, when he was about to engage in any hazardous or
foolish exploit. No; there was some sin or sorrow which had weaned and
divided this brother and sister, until the erring one should turn and repent.
And who could doubt that Mildred Lovell would open wide her arms to
receive the penitent?

I had sought my favorite deserted turret, to contemplate a glorious sunset
behind the distant mountains, when Rose joined me on the summit, from
whence we gazed on the dizzy depth below. She was unusually serious and
pale; her laugh was hushed, and she spoke in whispers.

“Why do you choose this spot, Evelin, to indulge your reveries?” she said,
“for I can not bear to remain here; and Harold would not ascend this
western tower for all the universe.”

“And why is it so distasteful to you, Rose?” I inquired, with some curiosity,
“for the view is the most superb I ever witnessed. Is this wing of the castle
haunted?” I added, with a smile, taking her arm, and making a step nearer
to the edge, guarded only by a very low, broad parapet.

She convulsively drew me back, exclaiming—“Oh! Evelin, if you knew the
dreadful recollections attached to this turret, you would not marvel at my
being so nervous. I do not believe it is haunted, but there are folks who do.
They report that white fleecy shadows hover around it by night, though
perhaps the owls and birds building in the crevices may account for the
supposed supernatural appearances.”

“And wherefore, Rose, is this turret in such bad repute? What are the
dreadful recollections attached to it? A legend of olden times, perhaps?”

“Alas, Evelin,” responded my companion, “'tis a reality of our own. My
poor cousin, Jocelin Priestly, met with his fearful end here. He fell from this
dizzy height on the shaven turf beneath, and lived but a few moments
afterward.”

[pg 474]
“But how did this fatal accident occur, Rose?” I inquired. “Why have you
never mentioned it before?”

Paler than ever, Rose replied, with a faltering voice, “Because it was not an
accident, Evelin” (she shivered, and put her lips close to my ear). “He was
cast down intentionally.”

“By whom, Rose?” My heart throbbed violently; strange thoughts were
rushing through my brain.

“I dare not tell you; I am forbidden to reveal more. I was very young at the
time, and things were hushed up; but poor Milly has been a changed being
ever since.”

“Mildred!” I exclaimed, in surprise; “what effect could this tragedy have on
her, more than on other members of your family?”

“It had, it had, Evelin, because she desired to screen the guilty; but ask me
no more, and let us quit this hateful place.”

My mind was bewildered and uneasy. Who could the guilty person alluded
to be, and wherefore such a mystery preserved? The wildest conjectures
disturbed my imagination, while redoubled love and sympathy were given
to the bereaved mother. But this tangled web was soon to be unraveled—
unraveled in an awful and sudden manner, for that avenging arm was
outstretched which no mortal can withstand.

We were preparing to return home, and I was happy in the near prospect of
seeing dear Lodimer so soon. Harold Lovell left the castle at early morn in
high health and spirits, to attend a race meeting, some few miles off, with
several boon companions. A quarrel arose, and Harold, deeming himself
insulted, and more than half inebriated, struck a desperate gambler, who
demanded satisfaction on the spot. Harold fell, mortally wounded, and was
borne back to Lovell on a litter, late in the evening. The father's despair,
blessedly merged in insensibility, the sister's agony, we draw a vail over.

Mrs. Priestly, Mildred, and myself, with the medical attendants, alone were
calm and of use, so far, indeed, as human aid extended. The domestics were
wildly running hither and thither, but to no purpose: Harold Lovell was
rapidly dying. Mrs. Priestly supported the expiring sufferer; she bathed his
temples, and spoke words of peace. You would have deemed him the son of
her fondest love, all dislike merged in pity and the tenderest solicitude.
Suddenly Harold opened his glazing eyes to their widest extent; he
recognized her, while a shudder convulsively shook his whole frame. He
essayed to articulate, and at length these broken sentences were heard,
“Forgive me, Aunt Priestly—now forgive. 'Twas I did it! Edwin is innocent;
I am the murderer. Oh! mercy! mercy!”

Mrs. Priestly had sank down beside the couch, as with clasped hands she
raised her streaming eyes to heaven; then burying her face, she murmured
—“I do forgive you, poor boy, and so does Edwin, freely.” The spirit passed
into eternity as she spoke these words. I saw Mildred fling herself into Mrs.
Priestly's arms, and I remember no more, for, unused to such scenes, my
strength succumbed.

Mr. Lovell and his son were laid side by side in the family vault on the
same day; the broken-hearted father surviving his beloved child but a few
hours. That son's dying confession was repeated to him, although he took
no notice at the time, and lived not to make restitution to the innocent; but
to his daughters, as co-heiresses, the whole of his immense wealth
descended; and yet Mr. Lovell left a son—a good, noble-hearted son, whom
he had unjustly disinherited. When the disinherited was told that the only
words his departed parent had spoken after receiving his death-blow, the
only token of consciousness he had evinced was in faintly murmuring,
“Bless Edwin, my son,” that son valued the world's wealth but as dross in
comparison; nor would he have exchanged those precious words for all the
uncounted riches of the globe! His father then had believed him innocent,
and had blessed him; and Edwin, the ornithologist of Ivy Lodge, came to
Lovell Castle, justly lord of all, but owning nothing save a thankful heart
and a peaceful mind, to be clasped in the arms of his faithful sister Mildred,
for they were twins, and linked together in heart. Then, and not till then,
were the following particulars narrated to Rose and myself by Mrs. Priestly.
Rose mourned deeply for her brother, but justice to the living demanded full
disclosure of the truth.

Edwin had never been a favorite with his father, a fall in infancy having
rendered him unsightly, and probably occasioned the delicate health which
induced that love of studious repose so opposite to those qualities which
Mr. Lovell admired in his younger son. A tutor was provided for Edwin at
home, while Harold, with his cousin, Jocelin Priestly, was sent to a public
school. With unfeeling thoughtlessness, Jocelin used often to amuse himself
by joking at the expense of Edwin's personal deformity, calling him
“hunchback,” and many other nick-names, all of which the amiable youth
bore with unflinching patience and fortitude, ever returning good for evil.
The quarrels and rivalry between Harold and Jocelin were violent and
unceasing; and, previous to the last vacation, they had risen to a fiercer
pitch than formerly, Jocelin Priestly having carried off a prize from Harold,
which the latter declared was unfair. Jocelin's spirits were outrageous, and
in reckless levity he made so unceasing a butt of the unfortunate elder
brother, that Edwin determined to keep himself as much aloof as possible
from the boisterous pair, whose bickerings and headstrong passion
disturbed his equanimity. Mildred, whose love and veneration for her

beloved brother was returned by him with a depth of affection which only
the isolated can feel, vainly tried to make peace and preserve concord. Mrs.
Priestly, with a mother's doating partiality for an only child, never allowed
Jocelin to be in fault, though she would chide his exuberant spirits, and
liked not that he should wound the gentle Edwin, whom she dearly loved.
Mr. Lovell, on the other hand, laughed at the [pg 475] lads' faults; and,
when he could not laugh, winked at them: “Edwin was a milk-sop, and
Harold and Jocelin fine, high-spirited, handsome fellows, who would grow
wiser as they grew older.” Mrs. Priestly “hoped so”—she “prayed so; and
Jocelin was so clever and handsome, that a little steadiness was all he
needed; there was nothing else amiss.” So argued the blind mother; and,
next to Harold, his uncle Lovell's affections were lavished on this nephew.

When these two youths made their appearance at the castle, Edwin
frequently retired to the western turret, where he could read and meditate
alone, and enjoy the lovely landscape. Here he was resting on a projecting
stone, which served as a bench, part of the edifice screening him from view,
when Jocelin Priestly appeared on the summit with a telescope in hand, and,
with boyish recklessness, jumped on the low parapet, balancing himself on
the extreme verge, as he applied the glass to his eye. In another moment
Harold came leaping up the turret-stairs, boiling with furious passion; and,
darting forward, he clutched at the glass, screaming, as he did so, “How
dare you take my telescope, sir, when you know I forbade you?” There was
a struggle, a violent thrust, succeeded by a scream of horror and despair,
and Edwin beheld his brother Harold alone on that dizzy height.

All this had passed in a moment a of time apparently. Harold looked round
with a wild, terrified glance, and fled, Edwin's limbs refusing to sustain him
in his efforts to reach the parapet, as he lost consciousness, and swooned.
Jocelin Priestly's fall had been noticed by a gardener, who gave an instant
alarm; but the ill-fated lad expired in his distracted mother's arms, after
articulating, “I am murdered.”

Edwin was found on the summit of the western turret, his incoherent
exclamations and agitation being considered proofs of guilt by his father
and tutor. He solemnly asseverated his innocence, but refused to enter into
particulars until his brother Harold returned, for Harold was absent, it was

supposed, in the adjacent woodlands, where he ofttimes resorted to practice
with his gun. When he did return, Harold with well-acted surprise heard the
dreadful tidings, and demanded, in a careless manner, where Edwin had
been at the time? When informed that he was found on the summit of the
tower, and of the deceased's fearful avowal in his dying moments, Harold
exclaimed, “Edwin has indeed avenged himself on poor Jocelin.” And
Edwin was branded as the dastardly wretch who had taken his cousin's life
thus!

Edwin denied the foul deed with indignation and horror; but, when Harold's
words were repeated to him, he hung his head, and blushed scarlet. He
spoke no more, save to affirm his innocence; and, when questioned as to
Jocelin Priestly having been near him on the tower just before he met with
his death, Edwin admitted the fact; but, when further pressed, he became
confused, and painful internal struggles were evident.

Mr. Lovell discarded his son forever. He would not harbor, he said, one who
had vengefully taken the life of his beloved nephew; the law, indeed, could
not reach the criminal, but a father's malediction could! So the hapless
Edwin was disowned and disinherited by his indignant parent, who granted
him a stipend barely sufficient for subsistence, and thrust him forth as an
alien. Harold had not encountered his brother's placid gaze; he shrank from
being alone with him, and when Edwin begged for an audience, it was
refused. Mildred protested her brother's innocence. Edwin had never
swerved from truth in his life; and, strange to say, there was another who
sided with Mildred, and that other, the miserable mother of the victim. She
had scrutinized and watched Harold Lovell closely; and when Edwin knelt
beside her, and said, with quiet, but impressive calmness, “I am innocent,
aunt; I never injured a hair of my cousin's head,” he was believed by that
jealous, breaking heart.

“But you were there, Edwin,” cried the poor lady; “you witnessed it: he
came not to his end by fair means. Speak—your brother—was it he did this
foul deed, for he envied and hated my son—the base, cowardly traitor!”

Passion choked Mrs. Priestly's utterance, and Edwin was mute. Neither
prayers nor entreaties induced him to explain past circumstances connected
with the direful catastrophe. He bore the burden of another's guilt; he bore

in silence the contumely that should have been heaped on another, and was
banished from the parental roof. But conviction found its way to Mrs.
Priestly's heart; and, though Mr. Lovell was implacable, nor would listen to
a suspicion implied that he might be deceived, the mother intuitively shrank
from contact with the false-hearted Harold Lovell. As years progressed, the
truth became more and more firmly impressed on her mind; and to him,
accused by his own father of being her only child's destroyer, she left the
bulk of her fortune, and established the outcast in her near vicinity, firmly
trusting that the Almighty, in his own good time, would bring the real
culprit to light. Her heart fixed on this culprit, but Mr. Lovell continued in
error and darkness. Those precious words spoken in his last hour proved,
however, that darkness was dissipated, and error abandoned, when the
dying man murmured a blessing on his exiled son, who had sacrificed
himself to shield an ungrateful brother from shame and opprobrium.

Within two years after her father and brother's decease, Rose rewarded the
long and sincere attachment of a neighboring squire by becoming his wife.
Lovell Castle was sold, and Mildred repaired to Lodimer; while, on the
original site of Ivy Lodge, a more commodious dwelling was in course of
preparation. There she resided with her beloved brother for the remainder of
their joint lives, and Mr. Edwin found in his sweet companion not only a
valuable coadjutor in his favorite pursuits, but an absolute rival in the
affections of his feathered pets; while the [pg 476] swan's nest among the
reeds on Lodimer's fair waters continued to be as carefully preserved and
guarded as it had been during the solitary years of the now happy
ornithologist.

A Child's Toy.

The afternoon was drawing in toward evening; the air was crisp and cool,
and the wind near the earth, steady but gentle; while above all was as calm

as sleep, and the pale clouds—just beginning in the west to be softly gilded
by the declining sun—hung light and motionless. The city, although not
distant, was no longer visible, being hidden by one of the many hills which
give such enchantment to the aspect of our city. There was altogether
something singularly soothing in the scene—something that disposed not to
gravity, but to elevated thought. As we looked upward, there was some
object that appeared to mingle with the clouds, to form a part of their
company, to linger, mute and motionless like them, in that breathless blue,
as if feeling the influence of the hour. It was not a white-winged bird that
had stolen away to muse in the solitudes of air: it was nothing more than a
paper kite.

On that paper kite we looked long and intently. It was the moral of the
picture; it appeared to gather in to itself the sympathies of the whole
beautiful world; and as it hung there, herding with the things of heaven, our
spirit seemed to ascend and perch upon its pale bosom like a wearied dove.
Presently we knew the nature of the influence it exercised upon our
imagination; for a cord, not visible at first to the external organs, though
doubtless felt by the inner sense, connected it with the earth of which we
were a denizen. We knew not by what hand the cord was held so steadily.
Perhaps by some silent boy, lying prone on the sward behind yonder
plantation, gazing up along the delicate ladder, and seeing unconsciously
angels ascending and descending. When we had looked our fill, we went
slowly and thoughtfully home along the deserted road, and nestled, as
usual, like a moth, among our books. A dictionary was lying near; and with
a languid curiosity to know what was said of the object that had interested
us so much, we turned to the word, and read the following definition: Kite
—a child's toy.

What wonderful children there are in this world, to be sure! Look at that
American boy, with his kite on his shoulder, walking in a field near
Philadelphia. He is going to have a fly; and it is famous weather for the
sport, for it is in June—June, 1752. The kite is but a rough one, for Ben has
made it himself, out of a silk handkerchief stretched over two cross-sticks.
Up it goes, however, bound direct for a thunder-cloud passing overhead;
and when it has arrived at the object of its visit, the flier ties a key to the
end of his string, and then fastens it with some silk to a post. By and by he

sees some loose threads of the hempen-string bristle out and stand up, as if
they had been charged with electricity. He instantly applies his knuckles to
the key, and as he draws from it the electrical spark, this strange little boy is
struck through the very heart with an agony of joy. His laboring chest
relieves itself with a deep sigh, and he feels that he could be contented to
die that moment. And indeed he was nearer death than he supposed; for as
the string was sprinkled with rain, it became a better conductor, and gave
out its electricity more copiously; and if it had been wholly wet, the
experimenter might have been killed upon the spot. So much for this child's
toy. The splendid discovery it made—of the identity of lightning and
electricity—was not allowed to rest by Ben Franklin. By means of an
insulated iron rod the new Prometheus drew down fire from heaven, and
experimented with it at leisure in his own house. He then turned the miracle
to a practical account, constructing a pointed metallic rod to protect houses
from lightning. One end of this true magic wand is higher than the building,
and the other end buried in the ground; and the submissive lightning,
instead of destroying life and property in its gambols, darts direct along the
conductor into the earth. We may add that Ben was a humorous boy, and
played at various things as well as kite-flying. Hear this description of his
pranks at an intended pleasure-party on the banks of the Schuylkill: “Spirits
at the same time are to be fired by a spark sent from side to side through the
river, without any other conductor than water—an experiment which we
have some time since performed to the amazement of many. A turkey is to
be killed for dinner by the electrical shock; and roasted by the electrical
jack, before a fire kindled by the electrical bottle; when the healths of all the
famous electricians in England, Holland, France, and Germany, are to be
drunk in electrified bumpers, under the discharge of guns from the electrical
battery.”

We now turn to a group of capital little fellows who did something more
than fly their kite. These were English skippers, promoted somehow to the
command of vessels before they had arrived at years of discretion; and
chancing to meet at the port of Alexandria in Egypt, they took it into their
heads—these naughty boys—that they would drink a bowl of punch on the
top of Pompey's Pillar. This pillar had often served them for a signal at sea.
It was composed of red granite, beautifully polished, and standing 114 feet
high, overtopped the town. But how to get up? They sent for a kite, to be

sure; and the men, women, and children of Alexandria, wondering what
they were going to do with it, followed the toy in crowds. The kite was
flown over the Pillar, and with such nicety, that when it fell on the other
side the string lodged upon the beautiful Corinthian capital. By this means
they were able to draw over the Pillar a two-inch rope, by which one of the
youngsters “swarmed” to the top. The rope was now in a very little while
converted into a sort of rude shroud, and the rest of the party followed, and
actually drank their punch on a spot which, seen from the surface of the
earth, did not [pg 477] appear to be capable of holding more than one man.

By means of this exploit it was ascertained that a statue had once stood
upon the column—and a statue of colossal dimensions it must have been to
be properly seen at such a height. But for the rest—if we except the
carvings of sundry initials on the top—the result was only the knocking
down of one of the volutes of the capital, for boys are always doing
mischief; and this was carried to England by one of the skippers, in order to
execute the commission of a lady, who, with the true iconoclasm of her
country, had asked him to be so kind as to bring her a piece of Pompey's
Pillar.

Little fellows, especially of the class of brick-layers, are no great readers,
otherwise we might suspect that the feat of the skipper-boys had conveyed
some inspiration to Steeple Jack. Who is Steeple Jack? asks some innocent
reader at the Antipodes. He is a little, spare creature who flies his kite over
steeples when there is any thing to do to them, and lodging a cord on the
apex, contrives by its means to reach the top without the trouble of
scaffolding. No fragility, no displacement of stones, no leaning from the
perpendicular, frightens Steeple Jack. He is as bold as his namesake, Jack-
the-Giant-Killer, and does as wonderful things. At Dunfermline, not long
ago, when the top of the spire was in so crazy a state that the people in the
street gave it a wide berth as they passed, he swung himself up without
hesitation, and set every thing to rights. At the moment we write, his cord is
seen stretched from the tall, slim, and elegant spire of the Assembly Hall in
Edinburgh, which is to receive, through his agency, a lightning-conductor;
and Jack only waits the subsidence of a gale of wind to glide up that filmy
rope like a spider. He is altogether a strange boy, Steeple Jack. Nobody
knows where he roosts upon the earth, if he roosts any where at all. The last

time there was occasion for his services, this advertisement appeared in the
Scotsman: “Steeple Jack is wanted at such a place immediately”—and
immediately Steeple Jack became visible.

In 1827 the child's toy was put to a very remarkable use by one Master
George Pocock. This clever little fellow observed that his kite sometimes
gave him a very strong pull, and it occurred to him that if made large
enough it might be able to pull something else. In fact, he at length yoked a
pair of large kites to a carriage, and traveled in it from Bristol to London,
distancing in grand style every other conveyance on the road. A twelve-foot
kite, it appears, in a moderate breeze, has a one-man power of draught, and
when the wind is brisker, a force equal to 200 lbs. The force in a rather high
wind is as the squares of the lengths; and two kites of fifteen and twelve
feet respectively, fastened one above the other will draw a carriage and four
or five passengers at the rate of twenty miles an hour. But George's
invention went beyond the simple idea. He had an extra line which enabled
him to vary the angle of the surface of his kites with the horizon, so as to
make his aerial horses go fast or slow as he chose; and side lines to vary the
direction of the force, till it came almost to right angles with the direction of
the wind. His kites were made of varnished linen, and might be folded up
into small compass. The same principle was successfully applied by a
nautical lad of the name of Dansey to the purpose of saving vessels in a gale
of wind on “the dread lee shore.” His kite was of light canvas.

In India, China, and the intermediate countries, the aggregate population of
which includes one-half of mankind, kites are the favorite toy of both old
and young boys, from three years to threescore and ten. Sometimes they
really resemble the conventional dragon, from which, among Scotch
children, they derive their name, sometimes they are of a diamond shape,
and sometimes they are like a great spider with a narrow waist. Our Old
Indian is eloquent on kites, and the glory of their colors, which, in the days
of other years, made her girlish heart leap, and her girlish eyes dazzle. The
kite-shop is like a tulip-bed, full of all sorts of gay and gorgeous hues. The
kites are made of Chinese paper, thin and tough, and the ribs of finely-split
bamboo. A wild species of silkworm is pressed into the service, and set to
spin nuck for the strings—a kind of thread which, although fine, is
surprisingly strong. Its strength, however, is wanted for aggression as well

as endurance; and a mixture composed of pounded glass and rice gluten is
rubbed over it. Having been dried in the sun, the prepared string is now
wound upon a handsome reel of split bamboo inserted in a long handle. One
of these reels, if of first-rate manufacture, costs a shilling, although coarser
ones are very cheap; and of the nuck, about four annas, or sixpence worth,
suffices for a kite.

In a Hindoo town the kite-flying usually takes place on some common
ground in the vicinity, and there may be seen the young and old boys in
eager groups, and all as much interested in the sport as if their lives
depended upon their success. And sometimes, indeed, their fortunes do.
Many a poor little fellow bets sweetmeats upon his kite to the extent of his
only anna in the world; and many a rich baboo has more rupees at stake
than he can conveniently spare. But the exhilarating sport makes every
body courageous; and the glowing colors of the kites enable each to identify
his own when in the air, and give him in it, as it were, a more absolute
property. Matches are soon made. Up go the aerial combatants, and, with
straining eyes and beating hearts, their fate is watched from below. But their
masters are far from passive, for this is no game of chance, depending upon
the wind. Kite-flying is in these countries an art and mystery; and some
there be who would not disclose their recipe for the nuck-ointment, if their
own grandfathers should go upon their knees to ask it.

Sometimes an event occurs on the common. It is the ascent of a pair of kites
of a distingué air, and whose grand and determined manner [pg 478] shows
that the combat is to be à l'outrance, and that a large stake of money
depends upon the result. The fliers are invisible. They are probably on the
flat roof of some neighboring house; but the kites are not the less interesting
on account of their origin being unknown. What a host of anxious faces are
turned up to the sky! Some take a liking to the red at first sight, while others
feel attracted by a mysterious sympathy to the green. Bets are freely offered
and accepted, either in sweetmeats or money; and the crowd, condensing,
move to and fro in a huge wave, from which their eager voices arise like the
continuous roaring of the sea. Higher and higher go the kites. Well done,
Red! he has shot above his antagonist, and seems meditating a swoop; but
the Green, serenely scornful, continues to soar, and is soon uppermost. And
thus they go—now up, now down, relatively to each other, but always

ascending higher and higher, till the spectators almost fear that they will
vanish out of sight. But at length the Green, taking advantage of a loftier
position he has gained, makes a sudden circuit, and by an adroit manœuvre
gets his silken string over the silken string of the other. Here a shout of
triumph and a yell of terror break simultaneously from the crowd; for this is
the crisis of the fight. The victor gives a fierce cut upon his adversary's line.
The backers of the latter fancy they hear it grate, and in an instant their
forebodings are realized; for the unfortunate Red is seen to waver like a bird
struck by a shot, and then, released from the severed string, he descends in
forlorn gyrations to the earth.

Now rush in the smaller boys to play their part. Their object is that of the
plunderers who traverse the field after a battle, to rob the dying and the
slain. Off run the little Hindoos, like a company of imps from the nether
regions, tearing and fighting as they fly; and on reaching the fallen kite, the
object of their contention is torn to pieces in the scuffle. Presently the
victorious Green is seen descending, and the gross excitement of the
common pauses to watch his majestic flight. He is of the largest size of
Indian kites called ching, and of the spider shape. Before being drawn in, he
hangs for an instant high up over the crowd. It is not, however, to sing Io
Pæans for his victory, but apparently rather to mourn over the ruin he has
made; for a wailing music breathes from his wings as he passes. This is
caused by the action of the wind upon some finely-split bamboo twigs
arched over the kite without touching the paper, and which thus become a
true Æolian harp. Sometimes a kite of this kind is sent up at night, bearing a
small lighted lantern of talc; and the sleepers awakened, called to their
balconies by the unearthly music, gaze after the familiar apparition not
without a poetical thrill.

Upon the whole, it must be admitted, we think, that this is a somewhat
interesting child's toy. But has the kite a future? Will its powers exhibit new
developments, or has it already reached its pride of place? If a twelve-feet
kite has the force of a man, would it take many more feet to lift a man into
the air? And supposing the man to be in a strong cage of network, with
bamboo ribs, and a seat of the same material, would he have greater
difficulty in governing his aerial coursers by means of the Pocock cords,
than if he were flashing along the road from Bristol to London? Mind, we

do not say that this is possible: we merely ask for the sake of information;
and if any little boy will favor us with his opinion, we shall take it very
kind. Come, and let us fancy that it is possible. The traveler feels much
more comfortable than in the car of a balloon, for he knows he can go pretty
nearly in what direction he chooses, and that he can hasten or check the
pace of his horses, and bring them to a stand-still at pleasure. See him,
therefore, boldly careering through the air at the rate of any number of
miles the wind pleases. At a single bound he spans yonder broad river, and
then goes bowling over the plantation beyond, just stirring the leaves as he
passes; trees, water, houses, men, and animals gliding away beneath his feet
like a dream. Now he stoops toward the earth, just to make the people send
up their voices that there may be some sound in the desert air. Now he
swings up again; now he leaps over that little green hill; now he—Hold!
hold, little boy! that will do: enough, for a time, of a Child's Toy.

“Rising Generation”-Ism.

“Grave and reverend seniors” aver, that among the innumerable isms and
pathies which inundate this strange nineteenth century, not the least curious,
dangerous, and comical, are those phases of character, opinion, and
aspiration embodied in the title of our sketch. Each day, week, or month, we
receive an accession to the list of those speculations and practices, which,
embracing every department of philosophy and art, seek to overturn hitherto
accepted axioms, and erect in their stead—what? Some “baseless fabric of a
vision,” which came we know not whence, and tends we know not very
well whither? Or has the microscopic eye and telescopic mind of modern
European civilization discovered other distorting flaws in the mirror in
which we view truth—other idols in the den of treasured belief—faults
which it is urgently necessary to remedy—vices which it were well speedily
to extirpate? The answer of most men will be sometimes the latter, oftener
the former.

What, then, is that fraternity whose members are now denominated in a
peculiar sense “the rising generation,” albeit no existing dictionary conveys
it? How came they to assume or receive that cognomen? “What are their
doings—what their ends?” And, finally (for this is par excellence the
practical, if not the golden English era), how much are all these worth? In
one shape or another, we suspect that the class embraces a great mass of our
youth, we will almost say, of both sexes.

Various definitions may be given of a member [pg 479] of the “rising
generation.” The lowest, commonest, and most readily apprehensible to the
general reader, is that of a “fast young man,” such as “Punch” has for some
time spitted weekly as a laughing-stock for half of the population. A little,
lean, lathy, sickly-looking youth, delighting in rough short coats, monkey
jackets, regatta shirts, big cigars, funny walking-canes, the smallest of
boots, the most angular of hats, the most Brobdignagian of ties—rejoicing
in a thinly-sown mustache or imperial, addicted to brandy-and-water and
casinos, going out with the “afternoon delivery,” and coming in with the
milk. This is true so far as it goes. Ascend a step, and there is the
representative of the class which has run to seed in the mediæval direction
—fond of, and learned in, all the symbols of ancient priestly power and
rank—steeped in black-letter and illuminated missal philosophy and
theology—erudite in all the variations which spiritual dominance has
assumed—in short, the resuscitator of the “good old times” ecclesiastical.

Again, we come to the type of the chief, and perhaps the finest class—
many-hued and many-sided, difficult to define, more difficult to estimate.
He is a chaos of misty beliefs and dubious doubtings—a striver after
theories which would exercise a spell over mind and matter of almost
alchemic potency—an open receiver for every new and quackish nostrum—
a shallow scholar, with the pedantry and conceit of a ripe one—a denier of
other men's attainments, without stopping to inquire whether he will ever be
able to equal them—apt to give dogmatic advice, and slow to take any—
lastly, and worst, he is sometimes a rash and unphilosophic would-be
analyzer of the grounds of our most sacred belief. He may be—indeed,
frequently is—of a genuine and earnest spirit, which he knows neither how
to direct nor bound.

In judging of the frame of mind which generates and elaborates, or receives
such impressions, it is necessary to remember and make due allowance for
the rapid and real advances which we have made in the sifting of old and
the ascertainment of new truth, within an almost infinitesimal portion of
time. Men now think and act vehemently—with appliances at their elbow
which, to those who know their power, are a true Aladdin's lamp, giving the
key to thoughts and deeds, and the clew to facts, which erst had been
deemed miraculous. When we now speak of the “rising generation,” it is
seriously. We discard the class whose dress is apish, whose life is an inanity,
whose thoughts are vapid, if not something fouler and worse. We would
think of, and give credit for earnestness, to that large class whose ready
reception and striving after the establishment of all things new, for novelty's
sake, and the demolition of many things old and revered, has fixed upon
them, half in jest, half in earnest, the sobriquet. Not only on matters of faith
—on innovations on all established practice, do they take their stand.
Education they understand in no limited sense. The acquisition of the circle
of sciences, and nothing less, is the average of their contentment. We are to
live in an age when every man, or, at least, every second, is to be an
Admirable Crichton. Formerly, it was thought that the mind of man was,
even in its strength, so feeble, that strict adherence to some single and well-
defined line of study or path of action was necessary, if a moderate skill in
its command were desired. He who loved and pursued his knowledge of
ancient people, languages, customs, and laws, was not expected to be
erudite except in classical lore. The philosopher and mathematician, if well
acquainted in their respective spheres with the laws and processes of mind,
matter, and number, were thought to have learned their part. The laborer in
the field of active industry, who was skillful in the taste and knowledge of
his craft and the use of its tools, was esteemed no cumberer of the ground.
If, after this, he cultivated his mind by a scrutiny of the labors of others, so
much the better. Under this régime, each man learned his own department,
every one knew something, better than his neighbors—could follow or
elucidate his special study or calling through ramifications the other could
not trace, and thus knowledge progressed, and became the great power that
it has grown.

But now the “rising generation” will have matters altered. Education is all
wrong, and too limited. The spirit of unity, as the Germans call it—that

hidden elf which haunts all knowledge, and is the same, however disguised
—is not to be caught except by a search which involves the acquisition of
every science, art, and philosophy. This, in addition to an insane and, we
shrink not from saying, a blasphemous dallying with things sacred, is the
grand error of the “rising generation”—the rock on which their bark will
founder, if it has not already done so. Man can not be a “universal genius.”
Let us by all means shake off the trammels under which education has
groveled—under which she still groans. Let us seek by all means to make
education so free, that, like the winds of heaven, and the light of the sun, no
man shall want a reasonable—a full share of her benefits. Let us seek
accurate and varied knowledge and scholarship, endeavoring (although it is
a difficult and subtle process) to find out for what our youth are best fitted,
by evoking the latent special talents with which their Maker has gifted
them, and thus train them in the expert use of that weapon which will
enable them to do yeoman service in the wide arena of the world. But,
while we do all this, let us beware. We have before now been taunted as a
nation of shopkeepers. This was no evil, if true; but who can calculate the
direness of that calamity which shall turn us into a nation of smatterers.
This is a looming evil of unparalleled magnitude. There can be no doubt
that at the present moment there is a tendency to rest content with very
superficial acquirements, if they be only heterogeneous enough. A man who
can gabble the alphabet of any science or subject may, if he has sufficient
[pg 480] presumption, gain credit for possessing a knowledge of its arcana
—for the ability necessary to plumb its profounder depths and unravel its
intricacies. The successful practice of this imposture, for it is nothing less,
has led, and is still leading, many to sacrifice accuracy for variety, both in
those departments which their circumstances, rightly considered, demand
that they should thoroughly understand, and in those branches which tend
only to add grace and finish to a liberal education.

In “those days,” the chance was that genius often passed away unnoticed or
neglected. In “the good time come,” we fear that a similar injustice will be
done, and in a larger measure. The modest, the sound-thinking, and really
learned, will withdraw from a field where they find as companions or
competitors only strutting jackdaws and noisy shallow smatterers, who have
decided that they were born for other purposes than to tread in the work-a-
day paths of life. A portion of the old as well as the “rising generation”

would do well to look to the present state of things. There is too often a
desire on the part of parents to push their children into positions for which
they are totally unfitted. There is a sphere for all, which, when chosen with
a due regard to ability, and not adopted through caprice or vanity, will lead
to usefulness in society and comfort to the individual.

We have little fear of that audacious phase in the character of the “rising
generation,” which devotes itself to a probing of those things which have to
do with our eternal destiny. A well-conducted inquiry of this kind is a
healthy symptom, and tends to fix good impressions: and, as for those
whose temerity exceeds their judgment, the Christian knows that his
bulwarks are too many and strong ever to be shaken by any blast of human
breath or stroke of human hand. Still, let every stumbling-block be
removed, and no safeguard neglected, which may be of service to those of
feeble knees or weak and timorous mind.

The “rising generation” are those upon whom the hopes of the world will
ere long rest, who are soon to have the reins of government in their own
hands, and must play their part in the great drama of life, at a time when its
stage affords more ample room for the development of true nobility, richer
opportunities for distinguishing a life by action, and of signalizing it by
discoveries almost magical—a time, in short, open to greater achievements
than any that have been won since this globe was first spun into space. The
greater the talent and the wealth of opportunity, so much more are the
dangers increased, and the more wily the machinations of the Spirit of Evil.
While the “rising generation” adopt as their motto “Excelsior,” and cultivate
an inquiring spirit, let it always be an earnest and definite one, not “blown
about by every wind of doctrine,” not falling into every quagmire of vain
conceit, until the mental eye is so besmeared that it can no longer discern
the true zenith. Yet, withal, it is not necessary to tread exclusively in the old
paths, as they are somewhat contemptuously styled; there is need and verge
enough for pioneering new ones. “Beat the bushes; there is still plenty of
game to be raised.” But do not disdainfully discard the experience of those
who have gone before. We do not insinuate by this that age and priority
combined make an oracle. Yet there are comparatively few men who can
not tell something that is worth hearing—communicate some bit of
knowledge which may save you the disbursement of some of those high

school fees which, as Thomas Carlyle keenly observes, must be paid for
experience.

It has been iterated and reiterated, that there is no royal road to knowledge.
This is true of knowledge, as it is true of any thing that is worth having.
And this brings to our recollection a manifestation of spirit displayed by
some portions of the “rising generation” to which we have not yet adverted.
This is called the non-mercantile idea—a growing dislike to all manual and
merely commercial pursuits, and an over-fondness for what are known as
the learned, and more especially the literary professions. This desire, we
fear, proceeds often from a wish to avoid labor; and, where this is the case,
we can assure all such that literature is not the sphere for indolence.

We neither impugn the honesty nor ignore the talents of the “rising
generation.” We would only tender them a parting advice: Think, learn, and
act, reverently and cautiously, and in the spirit of that philosophy which has
won for England her most enduring laurels—which taught her Newton to
discard for years, until fact supported theory, what was perhaps the broadest
glimpse of truth ever vouchsafed to the human mind. Do so, as they dread
the realization of the outline drawn by the master-hand of Jean Paul Richter
—“The new-year's night of an unhappy man.” His graphic picture we hold
up to the gaze of the “rising generation.” The season is appropriate. We are
all fond at this time of retrospection, and are full of resolves for the future.
Perhaps we may strike some chord now in jarring dissonance, that may yet
vibrate to divinest harmony.

“An old man stood on the new-year's midnight at the window, and gazed
with a look of long despair, upward to the immovable, ever-blooming
heaven, and down upon the still, pure, white earth, on which no one was
then so joyless and sleepless as he. For his grave stood near him; it was
covered over only with the snow of age, not with the green of youth; and he
brought nothing with him out of the whole rich life, no thing with him, but
errors, sins, and disease, a wasted body, a desolated soul, the breast full of
poison, an old age full of remorse. The beautiful days of his youth turned
round to-day, as spectres, and drew him back again to that bright morning
on which his father first placed him at the cross-road of life, which, on the
right hand, leads by the sun-path of virtue into a wide peaceful land full of

light and of harvests, and full of angels, and which, on the left hand,
descends [pg 481] into the mole-ways of vice, into a black cavern, full of
down-dropping poison, full of aiming serpents, and of gloomy, sultry
vapors.

“Ah! the serpents hung about his breast, and the drops of poison on his
tongue. And he knew now where he was!

“Frantic, and with unspeakable grief, he called upward to Heaven, ‘Oh!
give me back my youth again! O, father! place me once more at the cross-
path of life, that I may choose otherwise than I did.’ But his father and his
youth had long since passed away.

“He saw fiery exhalations dancing on the marshes, and extinguishing
themselves in the church-yard, and he said, ‘These are the days of my
folly!’ He saw a star fly from heaven, and, in falling, glimmer and dissolve
upon the earth. ‘That am I!’ said his bleeding heart, and the serpent-teeth of
remorse dug therein further in its wounds.

“His flaming fancy showed him sleepwalkers, slinking away on the house-
tops; and a windmill raised up its arms threateningly to destroy him; and a
mask that remained behind in the empty charnel-house assumed by degrees
his own features.

“In the midst of this paroxysm, suddenly the music for the new year flowed
down from the steeple, like distant church anthems. He became more gently
moved. He looked round on the horizon and upon the wide world, and
thought on the friends of his youth, who, better and more happy than he,
were now instructors of the earth, fathers of happy children, and blest men,
and he exclaimed, ‘Oh! I also might have slumbered like you, this new
year's night with dry eyes, had I chosen it. Ah, I might have been happy,
beloved parents! had I fulfilled your new year's wishes and instructions.’

In feverish recollection of the period of his youth, it appeared to him as if
the mask with his features raised itself up in the charnel-house—at length,
through the superstition which, on the new year's night, beholds spirits and
futurity, it grew to a living youth in the position of the beautiful boy of the

capitol, pulling out a thorn; and his former blooming figure was bitterly
placed as a phantasma before him.

“He could behold it no longer, he covered his eyes. A thousand hot, draining
tears streamed into the snow. He now only softly sighed, inconsolably and
unconsciously, ‘Only come again, youth! come again!’

“And it came again, for he had only dreamed so fearfully on the new year's
night. He was still a youth. His errors alone had been no dream; but he
thanked God that, still young, he could turn round in the foul ways of vice,
and fall back on the sun-path which conducts into the pure land of harvests.

“Turn with him, youthful reader, if thou standest on his path of error! This
frightful dream will, in future, become thy judge; but shouldst thou one day
call out, full of anguish, ‘Come again, beautiful youth!’ it would not come
again.”

A Taste Of Austrian Jails.

At the “Fête de Dieu,” in Vienna religious rites are not confined to the
places of worship—the whole city becomes a church. Altars rise in every
street, and high mass is performed in the open air, amid clouds of incense
and showers of holy water. The Emperor himself and his family swell the
procession.

I am an English workman; and, having taken a cheering glass of
Kronewetter with the worthy landlord of my lodgings, I sauntered forth to
observe the day's proceedings. I crossed the Platz of St. Ulrick, and thence
proceeded to the high street of Mariahilf—an important suburb of Vienna. I
passed two stately altars on my way, and duly raised my hat, in obedience
to the custom of the country. A little crowd was collected round the parish
church of Mariahilf; and, anticipating that a procession would pass, I took
my stand among the rest of the expectant populace. A few assistant police,
in light blue-gray uniforms with green facings, kept the road.

A bustle about the church-door, and a band of priests, attendants, and—
what pleased me most—a troop of pretty little girls came, two and two,
down the steps, and into the road. I remember nothing of the procession but
those beautiful and innocent children, adorned with wreaths and ribbons for
the occasion. I was thinking of the rosy faces I had left at home, when my
reflections were interrupted by a peremptory voice, exclaiming, “Take off
your hat!” I should have obeyed with alacrity at any other moment; but
there was something in the manner and tone of the “Polizerdiener's” address
which touched my pride, and made me obstinate. I drew back a little. The
order was repeated; the crowd murmured. I half turned to go; but, the next
moment, my hat was struck off my head by the police-assistant.

What followed was mere confusion. I struck the “Polizerdiener;” and, in
return, received several blows on the head from behind with a heavy stick.
In less than ten minutes I was lodged in the police-office of the district; my
hat broken and my clothes bespattered with the blood which had dropped,
and was still dropping, from the wounds in my head.

I had full time to reflect upon the obstinate folly which had produced this
result; nor were my reflections enlivened by the manners of the police-
agents attached to the office. They threatened me with heavy pains and
punishments; and the Polizerdiener whom I had struck assured me, while
stanching his still-bleeding nose, that I should have at least “three months
for this.”

After several hours' waiting in the dreary office, I was abruptly called into
the commissioner's room. The commissioner was seated at a table with
writing materials before him, and commenced immediately, in a sharp,
offensive tone, a species of examination. After my name and country had
been demanded, he asked:

“Of what religion are you?”

“I am a Protestant.”

[pg 482]
“So! Leave the room.”

I had made no complaint of my bruises, because I did not think this the
proper place to do so; although the man who dealt them was present. He
had assisted, stick in hand, in taking me to the police-office. He was in
earnest conversation with the Polizerdiener, but soon left the office. From
that instant I never saw him again; nor, in spite of repeated demands, could
I ever obtain redress for, or even recognition of the violence I had suffered.

Another weary hour, and I was consigned to the care of a police-soldier;
who, armed with sabre and stick, conducted me through the crowded city to
prison. It was then two o'clock.

The prison, situated in the Spenzler Gasse, is called the “Polizer-Hampt-
Direction.” We descended a narrow gut, which had no outlet, except
through the prison gates. They were slowly opened at the summons of my
conductor. I was beckoned into a long gloomy apartment, lighted from one
side only; and having a long counter running down its centre; chains and
handcuffs hung upon the walls.

An official was standing behind the counter. He asked me abruptly:

“Whence come you?”

“From England,” I answered.

“Where's that?”

“In Great Britain; close to France.”

The questioner behind the counter cast an inquiring look at my escort.

“Is it?” he asked.

The subordinate answered him, in a pleasant way, that I had spoken the
truth. Happily an Englishman, it seems, is a rarity within those prison walls.

I was passed into an adjoining room, which reminded me of the back parlor
of a Holywell-street clothes-shop, only that it was rather lighter. Its sides
consisted entirely of sets of great pigeon-holes, each occupied by the
habiliments or effects of some prisoner.

“Have you any valuables?”

“Few enough.” My purse, watch, and pin were rendered up, ticketed, and
deposited in one of the compartments. I was then beckoned into a long
paved passage or corridor down some twenty stone steps, into the densest
gloom. Presently I discerned before me a massive door studded with bosses,
and crossed with bars and bolts. A police-soldier, armed with a drawn sabre,
guarded the entrance to Punishment-Room, No. 1. The bolts gave way; and,
in a few moments, I was a prisoner within.

Punishment Room, No. 1, is a chamber some fifteen paces long by six
broad, with a tolerably high ceiling and whitened walls. It has but two
windows, and they are placed at each end of one side of the chamber. They
are of good height, and look out upon an inclosed graveled space,
variegated with a few patches of verdure. The room is tolerably light. On
each side are shelves, as in barracks, for sleeping. In one corner, by the
window, is a stone sink; in another, a good supply of water.

Such is the prison; but the prisoners! There were forty-eight—gray-haired
men and puny boys—all ragged, and stalking with slippered feet from end
to end with listless eyes. Some, all eagerness; some, crushed and
motionless; some, scared and stupid; now singing, now swearing, now
rushing about playing at some mad game; now hushed or whispering, as the
loud voice of the Vater (or father of the ward) is heard above the uproar,
calling out “Ruke!” (“Order!”)

On my entrance, I was instantly surrounded by a dozen of the younger jail-
birds, amid a shout of “Ein Zuwachs! Ein Zuwachs!” which I was not long
in understanding to be the name given to the last comer. “Was haben sie?”
(“What has he done?”) was the next eager cry. “Struck a Polizerdiener!”
“Ei! das ist gut!” was the hearty exclamation; and I was a favorite
immediately. One dirty, villainous-looking fellow, with but one eye, and
very little light in that, took to handling my clothes; then inquired if I had
any money “up above?” Upon my answering in the affirmative my
popularity immediately increased. They soon made me understand that I
could “draw” upon the pigeon-hole bank to indulge in any such luxuries as
beer or tobacco.

People breakfast early in Vienna; and, as I had tasted nothing since that
meal, I was very hungry; but I was not to starve; for soon we heard the
groaning of bolts and locks, and the police-soldier who guarded the door,
appeared, bearing in his hand a red earthen pot, surmounted by a round flat
loaf of bread “for the Englishman.” I took my portion with thanks, and
found that the pipkin contained a thick porridge made of lentils, prepared
with meal and fat; in the midst of which was a piece of fresh boiled beef.
The cake was of a darkish color, but good wholesome bread. Altogether, the
meal was not unsavory. Many a greedy eye watched me as I sat on the end

of the hard couch, eating my dinner. One wretched man seeing that I did not
eat all, whispered a proposal to barter his dirty neckerchief—which he took
off in my presence—for half of my loaf. I satisfied his desires, but declined
the recompense. My half-emptied pipkin was thankfully taken by another
man, under the pretense of “cleaning it!”

One of my fellow-prisoners approached me.

“It is getting late,” said he; “do you know what you have got to do?”

“No.”

“You are the ‘Zuwachs’ ” (latest accession), “and it is your business to
empty and clean out the ‘Kiefel!’ ” (the sink, &c.)

“The devil!”

“But I dare say,” he added, carelessly, “if you pay the Vater a ‘mass-bier,’ ”
(something less than a quart of beer), “he will make some of the boys do it
for you.”

“With all my heart.”

“Have you a rug?”

“No.”

“You must ask the corporal, at seven o'clock; but I dare say the Vater will
find you one—for a ‘mass-bier’—if you ask him.”

[pg 483]
I saw that a mass-bier would do a great deal in an Austrian prison.

The Vater, who was a prisoner like the rest, was appealed to. He was a tall,
burly-looking young man, with a frank countenance. He had quitted his
honest calling of butcher, and had taken to smuggling tobacco into the city.
This was a heavy crime; for the growth, manufacture, and sale of tobacco,
is a strict Imperial monopoly. Accordingly, his punishment had been
proportionately severe—two years' imprisonment. The sentence was now

approaching completion; and, on account of good conduct, he had received
the appointment of Vater to Punishment Room, No. 1. The benefits were
enumerated to me with open eyes by one of the prisoners—“Double rations,
two rugs, and a mass-bier a day!”

The result of my application to the Vater was the instant calling out of
several young lads, who crouched all day in the darkest end of the room—a
condemned corner, abounding in vermin; and I heard no more of the sink,
and so forth. The next day a new-comer occupied my position.

At about seven o'clock the bolts were again withdrawn, the ponderous door
opened, and the corporal—who seemed to fill the office of ward-inspector
—marched into the chamber. He was provided with a small note-book and a
pencil, and made a general inquiry into the wants and complaints of the
prisoners. Several of them asked for little indulgencies. All these were duly
noted down to be complied with the next day—always supposing that the
prisoner possessed a small capital “up above.” I stepped forward, and
humbly made my request for a rug.

“You?” exclaimed the corporal, eying me sharply. “Oh! you are the
Englishman?—No!”

I heard some one near me mutter: “So; struck a policeman! No mercy for
him from the other policemen—any of them.”

The Vater dared not help me; but two of his most intimate friends made me
lie down between them; and swaddled in their rugs, I passed the night
miserably. The hard boards, and the vermin, effectually broke my slumbers.

The morning came. The rules of the prison required that we should all rise
at six, roll up the rugs, lay them at the heads of our beds, and sweep out the
room. Weary and sore, I paced the prison while these things were done.
Even the morning ablution was comfortless and distressing; a pocket-
handkerchief serving but indifferently for a towel.

Restless activity now took full possession of the prisoners. There was not
the combined shouting or singing of the previous day; but there was
independent action, which broke out in various ways. Hunger had roused

them; the prison allowance is one meal a day; and although, by husbanding
the supply, some few might eke it out into several repasts, the majority had
no such control over their appetite. Tall, gaunt lads, just starting into men,
went roaming about with wild eyes, purposeless, pipkin in hand, although
hours must elapse before the meal would come. Caged beasts pace their
narrow prisons with the same uniform and unvarying motion.

At last eleven o'clock came. The barred door opened, and swiftly, yet with a
terrible restraint—knowing that the least disorder would cost them a day's
dinner—the prisoners mounted the stone steps, and passed slowly, in single
file, before two enormous caldrons. A cook, provided with a long ladle,
stood by the side of each; and, with a dextrous plunge and a twist, a portion
of porridge and a small block of beef were fished up and dashed into the
pipkin extended by each prisoner. Another official stood ready with the flat
loaves. In a very short time the whole of the prisoners were served.

Hunger seasoned the mess; and I was sitting on the bedstead-end enjoying
it, when the police-soldier appeared on the threshold, calling me by name.

“You must leave—instantly.”

“I am ready,” I said, starting up.

“Have you a rug?”

“No.”

I hurried out into the dark passage. I was conducted to the left; another
heavy door was loosened, and I was thrust into a gloomy cell, bewildered,
and almost speechless with alarm. I was not alone. Some half-dozen
melancholy wretches crouching in one corner, were disturbed by my
entrance, but half an hour had scarcely elapsed, when the police-soldier
again appeared, and I was hurried out. We proceeded through the passage
by which I had first entered. In my way past the nest of pigeon-holes “up
above,” some—only a few—of my valuables were restored to me. Presently
a single police-soldier led me into the open street.

The beautiful air and sunshine! how I enjoyed them as we passed through
the heart of the city. Bei'm Magistrat, at the corner of the Kohlmarket, was
our destination. We entered its porticoed door, ascended the stone stairs, and
went into a small office, where the most repulsive-looking official I have
any where seen, noted my arrival in a book. Thence we passed into another
pigeon-holed chamber, where I delivered up my little property, as before,
“for its security.” A few minutes more, and I was safely locked in a small
chamber, having one window darkened by a wooden blind. My companions
were a few boys, a courier—who, to my surprise, addressed me in English
—and a man with blazing red hair.

In this place, I passed four days, occupied by what I suppose I may
designate “my trial.” The first day was enlivened by a violent attack which
the jailer made upon the red-headed man for looking out of the window. He
seized the fiery locks, and beat their owner's head against the wall. I had to
submit that day to a degrading medical examination.

On the second day I was called to appear before the “Rath” or council. The
process of examination is curious. It is considered necessary to the
complete elucidation of a case, that the whole life and parentage of the
accused should be made known; and I was thus exposed [pg 484] to a series
of questions which I had never anticipated.—The names and countries of
both my parents; their station; the ages, names, and birthplaces of my
brothers and sisters; my own babyhood, education, subsequent behavior,
and adventures; my own account, with the minutest details, of the offense I
had committed. It was more like a private conference than an examination.
The Rath was alone—with the exception of his secretary, who diligently
recorded my answers. While being thus perseveringly catechised, the Rath
sauntered up and down; putting his interminable questions in a friendly
chatty way, as though he were taking a friendly interest in my history, rather
than pursuing a judicial investigation. When the examination was
concluded, the secretary read over every word to me, and I confirmed the
report with my signature.

The Rath promised to do what he could for me; and I was then surprised
and pleased by the entrance of my employer. The Rath recommended him
to write to the British Embassy in my behalf, and allowed him to send me

outer clothing better suited to the interior of a prison than the best clothes I
had donned to spend the holiday in.

I went back to my cell with a lightened heart. I was, however, a little
disconcerted on my return by the courier, who related an anecdote of a
groom of his acquaintance, who had persisted in smoking a cigar while
passing a sentinel; and who, in punishment therefor, had been beaten by a
number of soldiers, with willow rods; and whose yells of pain had been
heard far beyond the prison walls. What an anticipation! Was I to be
similarly served? I thought it rather a suspicious circumstance that my new
friend appeared to be thoroughly conversant with all the details (I suspect
from personal experience) of the police and prison system of Vienna. He
told me (but I had no means of testing the correctness of his information)
that there were twenty Ratherrn, or Councillors; that each had his private
chamber, and was assisted by a confidential secretary; that every offender
underwent a private examination by the Rath appointed to investigate his
case—the Rath having the power to call all witnesses, and to examine them,
singly, or otherwise, as he thought proper; that on every Thursday the
“Rathsherrn” met in conclave; that each Rath brought forward the particular
cases which he had investigated, explained all its bearings, attested his
report by documentary evidence prepared by his secretary, and pronounced
his opinion as to the amount of punishment to be inflicted. The question
was then decided by a majority.

On the third day, I was suddenly summoned before the Rath, and found
myself side by side with my accuser. He was in private clothes.

“Herr Tuci,” exclaimed the Rath, trying to pronounce my name, but utterly
disguising it, “you have misinformed me. The constable says he did not
knock your hat off—he only pulled it off.”

I adhered to my statement. The Polizerdiener nudged my elbow, and
whispered, “Don't be alarmed—it will not go hard with you.”

“Now, constable,” said the Rath; “what harm have you suffered in this
affair?”

“My uniform is stained with blood.”

“From my head!” I exclaimed.

“From my nose,” interposed the Polizerdiener.

“In any case it will wash out,” said the Rath.

“And you,” he added, turning to me—“are you willing to indemnify this
man for damage done?”

I assented; and was then removed.

On the following morning I was again summoned to the Rath's chamber.
His secretary—who was alone—met me with smiles and congratulations:
he announced to me the sentence—four days' imprisonment. I am afraid I
did not evince that degree of pleasure which was expected from me; but I
thanked him; was removed; and, in another hour, was reconducted to
Punishment Room, No. 1.

The four days of sentence formed the lightest part of the adventure. My
mind was at ease: I knew the worst. Additions to my old companions had
arrived in the interval. We had an artist among us, who was allowed, in
consideration of his talents, to retain a sharp cutting implement fashioned
by himself from a flat piece of steel—knives and books being, as the most
dangerous objects in prison, rigidly abstracted from us. He manufactured
landscapes in straw, gummed upon pieces of blackened wood. Straw was
obtained, in a natural state, of green, yellow, and brown; and these, when
required, were converted into differently-tinted reds, by a few hours
immersion in the Kiefel. He also kneaded bread in the hand, until it became
as hard and as plastic as clay. This he modeled into snuff boxes (with strips
of rag for hinges, and a piece of whalebone for a spring), draughts, chess-
men, pipe-bowls, and other articles. When dry, they became hard and
serviceable; and he sold them among the prisoners and the prison officials.
He obtained thus a number of comforts not afforded by the prison
regulations.

On Sunday, I attended the Catholic chapel attached to the prison—a damp,
unwholesome cell. I stood among a knot of prisoners, enveloped in a
nauseous vapor; whence arose musty, mouldy, rotten effluvia which

gradually overpowered my senses. I felt them leaving me, and tottered
toward the door. I was promptly met by a man who seemed provided for
emergencies of the kind; for, he held a vessel of cold water; poured some of
it into my hands, and directed me to bathe my temples. I partly recovered;
and, faint and dispirited, staggered back to the prison. I had not, however,
lain long upon my bed (polished and slippery from constant use), when the
prison guard came to my side, holding in his hand a smoking basin of egg
soup “for the Englishman.” It was sent by the mistress of the kitchen. I
received the offering of a kind heart to a foreigner in trouble, with a
blessing on the donor.

[pg 485]
On the following Tuesday, after an imprisonment of, in all, nine days,
during which I had never slept without my clothes, I was discharged from
the prison. In remembrance of the place, I brought away with me a straw
landscape and a bread snuff-box, the works of the prison artist.

On reaching my lodging I looked into my box. It was empty.

“Where are my books and papers?” I asked my landlord.

The police had taken them on the day after my arrest.

“And my bank-notes?”

“Here they are!” exclaimed my landlord, triumphantly. “I expected the
police; I knew you had money somewhere, so I took the liberty of searching
until I found it. The police made particular inquiries about your cash, and
went away disappointed, taking the other things with them.”

“Would they have appropriated it?”

“Hem! Very likely—under pretense of paying your expenses.”

On application to the police of the district, I received the whole of my
effects back. One of my books was detained for about a week; a member of
the police having taken it home to read, and being as I apprehend, a slow
reader.

It was a matter of great astonishment, both to my friends and to the police,
that I escaped with so slight a punishment.

Who Knew Best?

On the outskirts of the little town of Bernau, with a garden between it and
the road, stands the house of Master Baptist Heinzelmann, a respectable
citizen and cabinet-maker, or Tischlermeister, as the Germans call it, so
surrounded and overshadowed by tall trees and shrubs, that it reminds you
of true contentment, which is always quiet and retiring where it reigns in
the heart. Nimble vine-branches climb up the walls and over the roof, so
thick and shady, that birds build their nests among them, and rest every
night under the sheltering leaves. Besides this there is no other garnishment
or decoration to be seen about the dwelling, although Master Heinzelmann
is in very comfortable circumstances. As it had come down from his father
and grandfather, so stood the house at the time of our tale; one story,
compact and solid. From the garden you entered the spacious outer room,
the ordinary play-place of the children, and from that into the living-room,
and from that into the large workshop, where Master Heinzelmann kept his
ten or a dozen journeymen at work from one year's end to another, without
reckoning the apprentices. His business flourished greatly, for the townsfolk
preferred to go to him whenever they had orders to give or purchases to
make. His workmanship was tasteful and durable, and what was more than
all, he overcharged no one, which pleased people, and on that account they
did not mind the walk to his house, although it was, as before said, a little
off the road, and out of the way.

What the house wanted in grandeur and ornament, was made up by the
contentment and the gentle and full-hearted happiness which had taken up
their abode within it. Free from cares of whatever sort, Master Heinzelmann
passed his days in the circle of his family. Providence had bestowed on him

a good-looking, intelligent wife and three healthy and lively children, on
whom his whole affections hung, and when they assembled each evening,
after the labors of the day, none looked comelier and happier than they. At
seven o'clock, Master Heinzelmann left off work, and dismissed his men;
the noise of saws, hammers, and planes ceased, and a peaceful stillness
reigned in the house; and he, having put on his comfortable in-doors jacket,
filled a pipe, and looked about for his family. In summer, he found them
nearly always in the garden, or in the outer room, near the open door, from
whence there was a pleasant view over the sweet-scented flower-beds. His
wife welcomed his coming with a friendly nod and a cheerful smile, and the
children ran to meet him, clung to his hands, and strove to climb up for a
kiss. Such was Baptist Heinzelmann's daily pleasure, abounding in all that
makes life happy. After lifting up and embracing his children, he would sit
and listen to their lively prattle, or watch their simple sports, in which he
himself often took a part, while their mother made ready the evening meal.
When this was over, they went and sat in the pretty summer-house, and
talked about the little occurrences of the day. There was always something
to relate, concerning the children, or the housekeeping, or the garden, or of
other matters, nor was there any lack of simple gossip, which, however
insignificant it might seem, yet had a meaning and an interest for a family
bound together by the strongest ties of love. Father, mother, children,
enjoyed the quiet gladness of a household into which the noise of the great
world without seldom penetrated. And in what else does happiness consist,
than in gladness and contentment? He who possesses them needs to ask for
nothing further. Had Master Heinzelmann always remembered that, he
would have saved himself from much toil and vexation.

One fine summer evening the Tischlermeister left his workshop as usual,
put on his lounging-jacket, lit his pipe, and turned his steps toward the front
room, from whence came the noise of merry laughter and shouts of fun.
Softly he approached behind the open door which concealed him from his
wife and children, leant himself at his ease on the lower half, and looked
smilingly down on the frolics of his little ones. The mother, with the
youngest girl on her lap, sat on the doorstep, while Fritz and Hans crawled
about the floor. They were playing a hundred tricks with the kitten, which
had come into the world only a few weeks before. Fritz had got a piece of
colored cloth for a plaything, and flung it across the room, but with a thread

cunningly fastened to it, so that he might pull it back again. The kitten,
according to the manner of young cats, leaped and seized the lure with
comical antics, [pg 486] but just as she fancied it was fast between her
paws, came a sudden pull, and away flew the prize, while she looked after it
with ludicrous astonishment. Then rose bursts of merriment and shouts of
delight, and the mother, glad in her children's pleasure, laughed with them,
and took care that the old cat should not disturb their sport by any sudden
outbreak of ill-temper.

Master Heinzelmann looked on for a little while, and amused himself,
without being seen, with his children's diversions. All at once, however, he
made a grave face, and said, “Enough, little ones; let the kitten go, and
come to supper. Come, dear wife, it is all ready.”

As soon as the children heard their father's voice, they thought no more
about the kitten, but sprang up and ran toward him with merry faces. But he
did not hug and kiss them as he was accustomed to do; he gave them only a
short salute, and the same to his wife, who came toward him with her hand
held out, and the youngest child on her arm.

“Baptist,” she said, “dear husband, we have had rare fun this afternoon; you
should see how cleverly Fritz can spring about with the kitten! But what is
the matter? You look angry. Has any thing happened to vex you?”

“Not exactly vexatious,” replied Heinzelmann, “and yet as I saw you sitting
there so pleasantly, I was a little fretted to think that I had promised Master
Vollbracht to go into town this evening. I would much rather stay at home
with you.”

“Go to town, Baptist, to-day?” asked Frau Margaret in astonishment. “And
what have you to do there?”

“Oh, it is about some town affairs,” answered Baptist; “I don't myself know
rightly what they are; when Master Vollbracht told me, I did not altogether
understand, but, at all events, I promised to go for a short hour, so as to be
quit of him. You know well, Margaret, that to speak truly, the locksmith is
no special friend of mine—he is too fond of the public-house. Still a

promise is a promise, and I must keep my word; so let us have supper
quickly, for the sooner there, the sooner shall I be back again.”

Frau Margaret said nothing, although it could be seen in her face, that her
husband's going out in the evening was not at all agreeable to her. She went
and got the supper ready, Master Heinzelmann ate a few mouthfuls hastily,
and then rose up and put on his coat.

“Good-by, Margaret,” he said, “good-night, children! I expect to be at home
again soon, wife.”

“Go, then,” she answered with a cheerful look, “and I will wait for you; but
do not stay too long.”

Baptist promised, and went. Frau Margaret felt uneasy as she looked after
him. It was the first evening since their marriage that she had been left
alone in the house. When she heard the garden gate shut behind her
husband, she became fearful, and pressed her hand over her eyes, out of
which a few tears had forced their way. Presently, however, she said to
herself—“Timid heart! what matters it if you are left alone for once? It will
not happen often, for he loves me; yes, and the children too. How can I be
so silly!”

So she thought, and then put on a cheerful face, and played and talked to the
children, as though nothing had happened. But that pure gladness, which
leaps from the care-free heart as a clear spring, was wanting. She sent the
youngsters to bed earlier than usual, and placed herself at the window, and
looked silently forth into the garden, which the moon, with its pale light,
seemed to have covered with a vail of silver. Thus she waited for her
husband's return. At ten o'clock she hoped he would come; by-and-by
eleven struck, he was still absent; an other anxious half-hour passed—at last
he came. She heard his footsteps still far off, heard the garden-gate creak,
and flew to meet him.

“So late! you bad man,” she cried merrily, but with a slight reproach in the
tone of her voice.

“I could not do otherwise, dear wife,” replied Baptist, who was visibly a
little excited “You should only have been there! They paid me great honor,
and when I was coming away at ten o'clock, they all cried out for me to
stay, that my opinion had great weight with them, and so, really I could not
leave. But you should have gone to bed, Margaret.”

“No; I was not at all tired,” answered the wife. “But, now, make haste in;
you are heated, and the cool night air may do you harm.”

Lovingly she drew him into the house, and listened patiently to all that he
had to tell about the matters that had been talked over in the town, and how
he had settled and determined nearly every question, because of his
consequence and station.

“There's only one thing vexes me,” he said lastly, “I was obliged to promise
to go again. Two evenings in the week are fixed on for the meetings, and as
every body was in favor, I could not well say no. However, it is but two
evenings; the whole history won't last longer.”

If Frau Margaret was alarmed at the beginning of the evening, she was now
doubly fearful Her quiet in-door happiness seemed to be all at once
threatened by some great danger. She trembled to think that her husband
could find pleasure away from home—away from his children, and she had
the sense to foresee the consequences. But she remained silent, for she was
too bewildered to find words to express her apprehensions, and then, she
knew that when her husband had once made a promise, nothing would lead
him to break it. This made her sorrow the greater, and for the first time
since her marriage, her pillow was wet with tears. She, however, concealed
her sadness from her husband; she hoped that the good old habits would
rule again, and make him dislike passing his evenings away from home.

Although Frau Margaret was prudent and sensible, she deceived herself in
this matter. Truly enough, Baptist at first went out for the evening [pg 487]
unwillingly, and not without a struggle, but gradually this resistance
disappeared, and at last he longed for the hour which led him among his
companions. He was a man of clear judgment, knew how to deliver his
words neatly, and his comfortable circumstances gave him a certain
importance, so that, quite naturally, in course of time he gave the tone to the

company, and his sayings were received as oracles. That flattered his vanity,
which therein got full satisfaction, and before long, he wondered in secret
how he could have lived so many years in the background, and had so little
to do with the world. The political and religious questions of the day, about
which he had never before troubled himself, began to excite his eager
attention. He read newspapers, journals, pamphlets, and became a great
politician—at least in the eyes of himself and his companions. The magic
circle of his calm and peaceful happiness was broken. Baptist himself had
done it, but without a foreboding of what he had destroyed. He fancied
himself happier than ever, and could not see that all his household joys were
blighted.

But Margaret saw and felt it. She mourned in secret; the evenings when she
sat at home alone were sad and sorrowful for her, and at last, as Baptist left
off observing any rule in his outgoing, but longed more and more to be
away from home, she plucked up a heart, and begged of him to leave her no
more.

“But why not!” rejoined Heinzelmann; “we do nothing wrong. We debate
about matters for the good of the town and of the state. There must be great
changes, Margaret, before things can be better with us. But, presto, it will
come.”

“Oh, Baptist, what concern have you with the town and the state?”
answered Frau Margaret. “Look at your family, that is your town and state.
When you are with it, and fulfill your duty rightfully, then are you one of
the best of citizens. Consider well: the skin is nearer than the fleece.”

“Yes, wife, but what do you mean by that?” said Baptist, a little angrily.
“Perhaps I am not fulfilling my duty?”

“No longer the same as formerly, dear husband. Don't take it ill, Baptist, but
my heart and conscience compel me—I must tell you. You neglect your
business a little. Yesterday, you know, the town-clerk wanted his coffer; but
you—you went out at five, and the coffer was not finished.”

“Eh, what!” cried Baptist, snappishly. “I had business in town—we were to
lay a memorial before the magistrates about the pavement, and that could

not be done without me; and the town-clerk can have his coffer to-day.”

“No, dear husband,” replied the wife, “he sent a little while ago to say that
he had got one; and now, you see, the coffer must be kept on hand unsold.”

“The town-clerk is an old fool,” continued Baptist, fretfully. “These
aristocrats!—they always want to ride on the necks of us honest traders. But
patience! Our turn will come someday.”

“But, dearest husband,” said Margaret, soothingly, “the town-clerk has
always been very agreeable and friendly with you, and it is certainly not his
fault, that the coffer was not ready at the right time. Many go out for wool
and come home shorn. Had you thought more of the skin than of the fleece,
you would have saved yourself all this trouble. You understand: your
business—that's the skin; the street paving—that's the fleece.”

“Yes, I understand well enough what you mean,” rejoined the
Tischlermeister, “but I understand it quite otherwise! You, however, do not
understand me: men were meant for general affairs, for great matters. Their
mind stretches far beyond the narrow circle of housewifery. Only let me
alone, and don't mix yourself up in things which don't concern you, and
which you don't understand.”

Frau Margaret saw plainly that her remonstrance made no impression, and
she remained silent. But her sad and downcast looks spoke more loudly to
the heart of her husband than her words. Heinzelmann found that her view
was not far wrong, after all, and made an attempt to withdraw from his
companions, and again live a domestic life. But his attempt failed. Vanity,
and the desire to appear somebody, led him back again to his crooked ways,
and soon they became worse.

The insurrection at Paris broke out—the Republic was proclaimed—and the
news of these events fell on the minds of the German people like a spark in
a barrel of gunpowder. Blow followed blow, feelings grew hot, and almost
every town had its own revolution. That was something for Master Baptist
Heinzelmann. He was called to the head of the Democratic party, and made
the leader of a revolutionary club, and spouted speeches full of fire and
flame; the mob cried hurrah! held up their hands for him—he became drunk

with triumph—was chosen town-councilor—a great man, as he thought,
and leader of the people. He was near being elected Deputy to the Diet, and
sent as representative to the Parliament at Berlin. Master Baptist swam in
pleasures—Frau Margaret swam in tears. Her husband triumphed—she sat
at home and wept. Her husband walked proudly about, and looked radiant
with joy—she was full of mournfulness, and the feeling of happiness
seemed to have disappeared from her heart forever.

Master Heinzelmann appeared to be totally changed. He troubled himself
no longer about his business, but left every thing to his work men. Every
morning early, he left home to fulfill his new vocation as leader of the
people, and to labor for their happiness. He saw not that his own happiness
was going to ruin in the meantime. He used to return home late, worn-out,
weary, and hoarse with much speechifying and shouting, and ill-tempered
into the bargain. Scarcely had he exchanged a few sulky words with his
poor wife, than he betook himself to bed. He rarely saw his children: the
pleasant evenings in the front-room had all vanished as a [pg 488] dream,
and could not be recalled. Instead of merry laughter, and joyful cries, and
glad shoutings, there was nothing to be heard but the low, sad sobs of Frau
Margaret. Peace and contentment seemed to have fled from the house, as
well as from the hearts of all its inmates. Yes—all! for to confess the truth,
Master Baptist Heinzelmann found, little by little, that although his new life
in the busy current of politics brought plenty of excitement, it by no means
brought contentment; and instead of making him happy, it laid upon him
rather a burden of cares, vexations, hardships, and losses of many kinds. At
first it went well enough—but how went it afterward? His party, which in
truth was not a small one, listened to him right willingly when he held forth
and displayed his political knowledge, but they also had no objection to a
cool drink now and then between the fiery speeches. So Master Baptist,
from time to time, in order to keep up his popularity, was obliged to let a
cask of ale go the rounds, and that was not quite so pleasant to him as to be
listened to with attention, and to hear the hurrahs when he said something a
little more violent than usual. Besides, there were other leaders of the
people as well as he, who stood in high favor with the mob, but who had
very little money, while Master Heinzelmann was well-to-do, and could
afford to offer a sacrifice on the altar of his country, and—he offered it.
Only, somehow or other, the sacrifice was wanted so often, and that was not

much to the liking of the Tischlermeister. In the end—and that worried him
the most—his journeymen became refractory all of a sudden. They wished
also to have property of their own, and demanded higher wages. Baptist
Heinzelmann liked revolutions very well, but not against himself, and so he
told all his hands to go to Jericho, and for a time his business went to sleep.
From this it happened that orders did not come in quite so numerously as
before, which puzzled Baptist not a little. He began to turn it over in his
mind, and all at once he bethought himself of what his good-hearted wife
had said to him one day: “Remember! the skin is nearer than the fleece.”
Never had the truth of this proverb come before him so strikingly and
forcibly, as now that his delusions were losing their strength. A singular and
irresistible longing to return once more to his former tranquil and retired,
and yet happy life, overcame him. What was the selfish love of the mob,
against the pure and true love of wife and children? a painted bubble in
comparison with a bright and costly jewel. Baptist Heinzelmann plucked up
a heart; toward evening he left the council-house and went home. No one
was in the garden; it lay there in deep stillness. He stole down a by-path to
his workshop, where now but three hands were employed out of the dozen
that formerly worked therein, and threw off his Sunday clothes, put on his
dear old comfortable jacket, his cap on his head, reached down the clay pipe
which had had such a long rest, lit it, and then went softly through the inner
to the outer room. Wife and children sat, as often before, on the threshold,
not lively as they used to be, but particularly quiet and downcast—even
merry Fritz had scarcely a word to say for himself. The sun was dropping
down to his setting, and cast golden streams of light through the thick
foliage of the vine which enwreathed the door and window, down upon the
clean boards of the floor. Sweet odors were borne in on the air from the
garden, the birds chirped and twittered their last evening notes, and peace
and tranquillity reigned around, except in the hearts which once knew
nothing else than joy and contentment.

Heinzelmann leant over the door, and for a time looked at his family in
silence. The past came before his mind as pleasant pictures. “What a fool
was I!” he said inwardly to himself; “what more blessed happiness can
there be, than the happiness in the circle of one's own family! What a fool
was I, not to see this long ago: that I could so long be blinded by stupid
vanity and foolish pride! But there is yet time, and I will not let it escape.”

“Margaret,” he said aloud, and with friendly voice.

“Baptist—is that you? and so early!” she cried, and sprang up; “and what
do I see? in the old cap and jacket! Are you not going out again?”

“Not to-day, nor to-morrow, nor afterward,” answered he, smiling. “With
the old dress, I have found again my old heart. The skin is nearer than the
fleece, my Margaret, my good, dear wife!”

“Oh, goodness!” she exclaimed, “what do you say? what do I hear? am I
not in a dream?”

“If you are dreaming that the old contentment has come back again,”
replied Baptist, “then is your dream a true one. I have grown wise at last,
Margaret.”

“Thank God!” stammered the Frau; “and instead of handling the pen, you
will now work with the plane—will you?”

“Yes, Margaret, stick to that which I know, and leave it to others to bungle
at politics. In short, I have given up my post—I am no longer town-
councilor. I am now only what I was before—Tischlermeister Baptist
Heinzelmann! Am I welcome to you as such?”

With a shriek of delight, Frau Margaret fell into her husband's open arms.
Long and close was their embrace, and the sense of newly-quickened joy
brought sweet tears from the wife's heart. The children understood not what
was going on; but they saw that their father was glad and contented, and
they were glad and contented too. Until late at night, they sat together in the
garden, rejoicing in their new-found happiness.

Baptist became truly the Tischlermeister of former days, and suffered
himself to be no more drawn into temptation. A burnt child shuns the fire;
and he knew now the difference between family joys and worldly joys. His
late friends and companions came entreating him to take part once more in
their proceedings, but Baptist [pg 489] put them off with a laugh, and
answered, “Not so, dear friends—the skin is nearer than the fleece! In-doors

there, at the work-bench, is my post. Other people understand politics and
government better than I—I leave the task to them.”

The friends and companions tried again two or three times—Heinzelmann,
however, remained firm; they gave up and came no more. But the old
customers returned, and the old journeymen also, who had thought better of
their strike—and above all, the old joy of tranquil, domestic life.

Baptist would not change with any one. And Frau Margaret?—only go by
the house some day toward evening, when she is playing with the children,
or sitting with them and her husband in the garden; then, when you hear her
clear, silvery laugh, then, I can believe, you will no more ask if she is
happy. Such a laugh can come only from a truly happy heart.

My First Place.

My father died before I can remember any thing. My mother had a hard life;
and it was all that she could do to keep herself and me. We lived in
Birmingham, in a house where there were many other lodgers. We had only
one room of our own; and, when my mother went out to work, she locked
the door and left me there by myself. Those were dreary days. When it was
summer, and the bright sun shone in at the window, I thought of the green
fields that I used to see sometimes on Sundays, and I longed to be sitting
under a shady tree, watching the little lambs, and all young things that could
play about. When it was winter, I used to sit looking at the empty grate, and
wishing to see the bright blaze which never came. When mother went away
in the winter mornings, she told me to run about to warm myself; and, when
I was tired and began to feel cold, to get into the blankets on the bed. Many
long and wearisome hours I passed in those blankets; listening and listening
to every step upon the stairs, expecting to hear mother's step. At times I felt
very lonely; and fancied, as it began to grow darker and darker, that I could

see large, strange shapes rising before me; and, though I might know that it
was only my bonnet that I looked at, or a gown of mother's hanging up
behind the door, or something at the top of the old cupboard, the things
seemed to grow larger and larger, and I looked and looked till I became so
frightened, that I covered my head with the blanket, and went on listening
for mother's return. What a joyful sound to me was the sound of the key put
into the door-lock! It gave me courage in an instant: then I would throw
away the blanket; and, raising my head with a feeling of defiance, would
look round for the things that had frightened me, as if to say, “I don't care
for you now.” Mother would light the fire, bring something from the basket,
and cook our supper. She would then sit and talk to me, and I felt so happy
that I soon forgot all that had gone before.

Mother could not always get work. I was glad then; for those days were the
Sundays of my life; she was at home all day; and although we often had
nothing to eat but bread and potatoes, she had her tea; and the potatoes
always tasted to me at these times better than they did on other days.
Mother was not a scholar, so she could not teach me much in that way; but
she taught me how to keep our room clean and free from dust. I did not
know much of other children; but I had a little cousin about my own age,
who came sometimes on Sundays with my aunt, and sometimes we went to
see them.

At last mother was taken ill—so very ill that she could not go out to work,
and as I could not do for her all that was wanted to be done, my aunt came
to be with us. Mother became worse and worse, and the doctor said he did
not think she would ever get better. I heard him say this to aunt, and he said
it in such a way as if he thought I could not feel; and I do think there are
some people who think that children can not feel; but I did feel it very
much. Aunt used to sit up at nights. I had a little bed made in a corner of the
room on the floor. One night after I had cried myself to sleep, I started up
from a bad dream about dear mother. At first I could not remember where I
was, not being used to my strange bed; but, when I did remember, I saw that
the rush-light was just burning out. All was very quiet. The quietness
frightened me. The light flared for an instant, and then it was gone; but it
showed me my aunt lying on the floor with her head leaning on the bed; she
was fast asleep. I thought mother was asleep, too, and I did not dare to

speak. Softly creeping out of bed, I groped my way as well as I could to
mother's side. I listened, but I heard no sound; I got nearer to her; I could
not hear her breathe; I put out my hand to feel her face; the face was
clammy and almost cold. “Mother! dear mother!” I cried. The cry awoke
my aunt; she got a light. Mother was dead.

I can not remember what happened for a long time afterward; for I was very
ill, and was taken to my aunt's house. I was very miserable when I got better
again. I felt quite alone in the world; for though aunt was kind, her kindness
was not like mother's kindness. Whenever I could get to be by myself, I
used to think of poor mother; and often in the long, long nights, I would lie
awake thinking about her, fancying that she was near, saying things to
comfort me. Poor mother!

Time passed on, and by degrees I began to feel happier; for through the
interest of a kind lady—a Mrs. Jones—I was got into a school, where I was
kept entirely, and taught not only reading, writing, arithmetic, and to do
needlework; but was also taught how to do every branch of household
work, so as to qualify me to be a servant. At the age of sixteen, suitable
places were provided for the girls.

I pass over my school-days. They were very happy ones; but, when I was
selected to be the servant of a lady in London, I was very miserable at
parting from every body that I knew in the world, and at going among
strangers who would not love me one bit.

[pg 490]
It rained heavily on the day I left; and every thing to be seen out of the
window of the railway train looked dismal and dripping. When I got to the
station, in London, I went into the waiting-room. I waited a long time: one
after another went away, till at last I was left alone to watch the pouring rain
as it fell faster and faster. I was beginning to feel very dismal indeed, when
a smartly dressed young woman came into the waiting-room. At first I
thought she was a lady; she came toward me, “Are you the young person
from Birmingham?” she said. I was up in a moment, saying, “Yes, ma'am,”
courtesying as I spoke. But the minute afterward I was sorry that I had
courtesied; for I was sure she was not my mistress.

We were soon in the cab. “Well,” said my companion, whom I soon knew to
be Maria Wild, the housemaid, “and so you took me to be your mistress, did
you?” and she laughed in a disagreeable way; “I shan't forget your humble
courtesy, and I'll try to keep you up to it.” The house at which we stopped
was a pretty stone house, standing at a little distance from the road,
surrounded by a nice garden. I was glad it was in the country, for the sight
of trees and green fields always called to mind those happy Sundays when
dear mother was alive. But the country looked very gloomy just then; every
thing seemed as dull as I was.

I was chilly and shivering, and glad to creep to the fire; no one was in the
kitchen. The kettle was boiling: it sounded cheerily, like the voice of friends
I had often heard. The tea-things were set ready, and every thing around
looked comfortable. By-and-by in came Maria and another servant—the
cook. She was so smart! I looked at her timidly. “Well!” she said, “now for
your courtesy.” I knew at once that Maria had been telling her about my
mistake. I looked grave, and felt very uncomfortable; but I did not courtesy.
“Come, come,” said she, “I'll excuse you to-night; you shall have some tea
to cheer you up a bit. But don't look so down-hearted, girl; this'll never do;
you must pluck up.”

Then we sat down. She asked me a great many questions, all about the
place I had come from; the relations that I had; every thing about the
school; what I had done there; till at last I was quite tired of answering.
Then I asked some questions in my turn.

The family consisted of a master and mistress, three children (all young),
and four servants. My business, I heard, was the care of the second
drawing-room, to help the nurse till two o'clock, and after that time to help
the cook. I wished that it had fallen to my chance to have had a place more
decidedly a one place than this seemed to be; but I did not dare to say a
word. I was very much tired, and cook told me that I might go to bed; for
mistress (who was out) would not return till too late to speak to me that
night. Very glad I was to go. I was to sleep in the room with the cook and
housemaid; but had a small bed to myself. Tired as I was, I could not sleep.
When they came into the room, they believed me to be asleep, and they
went on talking for a long time. I wished not to hear what they said; for

though I could not understand half of it, I was sure that what they talked
about was very wrong. With such companions I felt that I could never be
happy. I longed for morning, that I might write at once to the matron of my
school and tell her so.

But what would the matron say? I knew well that she would chide me; for
in the very last advice she gave me, she said that I must expect, when I went
into the world, to meet with evil-speakers and with evil-doers, and that it
must be my constant care to keep myself unspotted from bad example. I
thought of this over and over again, and determined that, whatever might
happen, I would try to do right. Besides, I had not seen the nurse yet; she
might be a person that I could like; and in this hope I went to sleep.

When I awoke, the bright sunlight was shining in through the window; I
was alone in the room, and I was sure that it was very late. I was dressing
hurriedly when the door softly opened. It was Maria Wild. “How soundly
you have slept!” she said; “I had not the heart to awake you; but you must
make haste now, for mistress is down, and has asked for you, and we have
finished breakfast.” I was not long in following her. The cook had kept
some tea warm for me; her manner seemed kinder, and I wished that I could
forget what had passed. By-and-by the parlor bell rang. It was for me; and,
with a beating heart, I prepared to go into the presence of my first mistress.

What a pretty, sweet, gentle lady! and so very young that I could scarcely
believe she could be my mistress. She spoke to me most gently, hoped I
should prove a good girl; and, without entering into the nature of my duties,
merely said that the cook and the nurse would put me in the right way. Dear
lady! she was like many other ladies who marry as soon as they leave
school; and who, without knowing any thing at all about the management of
a house, rush into housekeeping.

I wish I could have had all my instructions from my mistress. As it was, I
had three distinct mistresses; my real one knowing less about what I did,
than either of the others. I was often very much tempted to peep into the
beautiful books which were lying about the drawing-room I had the care of.
As I dusted them with my brush, once or twice I could not resist; and, one
morning I opened the prettiest, in which there were such beautiful
engravings, that I turned them all over till I came to the end. One engraving

seemed so very interesting that I could not resist reading a little of the story
which told about it. I was standing with the book in one hand, the dusting
brush in the other, forgetting every thing else, when I was startled by the
sound of my own name. I turned round and saw my mistress. “Fanny!”
repeated my mistress, “this is very wrong; I do not allow this.” I could not
speak, but I felt myself turn very red; [pg 491] and I put the book hastily on
the table. I did not try to make any excuse for what I had done. I was
touched by the gentleness with which my mistress had reproved me.

Several weeks passed. I was very miserable, but I struggled hard to bear all
as well as I could. I was sure that both the nurse and the cook gave me a
great many things to do that they ought to have done themselves; so that I
had very little rest, and was very tired when night came. I was certain that I
was a restraint on what they had to say to each other: they were by no
means sure of me; and, when I entered the kitchen unexpectedly, I knew by
their altered tone and manners that they spoke of something different to
what they had been speaking about before. I saw many signs pass between
them, which they did not think I saw. Sometimes I knew they were trying to
see how far they might trust me, and I had a strong wish that they would
find out they never would be able to trust me.

One day I was cleaning the children's shoes in a little out-house near the
kitchen, when my mistress came down to give orders for dinner. The cook
did not know I was there. Most of what was said I could hear very
distinctly; for the kitchen-door was open. “Oh! indeed, ma'am,” said the
cook, “these young girls eat a great deal; you'd be astonished to see how she
makes away with the puddings.”—“Change of air has given her an appetite,
I suppose,” said my mistress.—“Yes, indeed, ma'am; but if it was an
appetite in moderation, I should say nothing about it; but to see her eat in
the way she does—why, ma'am, yesterday, besides the pudding left from
the nursery, I had made another for our dinner, and though Mary and I took
only the least morsel, there was not a bit left.”—“Indeed!” said my mistress,
and left the kitchen.

It was hard work for me to keep quiet. Twice I went toward the kitchen-
door. I felt myself burn all over with anger; but I was struck dumb by the
falsehoods I had heard. There had been no pudding for dinner the day

before, and having had a headache, I had eaten no meat; nor could I have
been tempted even by the savory-looking veal cutlets that the cook had
prepared for herself and Mary. For some time after my mistress had left the
kitchen I remained quite still; indeed, I was scarcely able to move; then I
made a rush toward the kitchen-door, intending to up-braid the cook with
her wickedness; but again I checked myself. I waited till I could leave the
out-house and pass up the back stairs without being seen; then I went into
the room where I slept, threw myself upon my little bed, and cried bitterly.

I was roused by the nurse, who had been seeking the children's shoes to take
the children out to walk. I washed my eyes, and went out with them. The
baby was a nice chubby little thing, about seven months old, but he was
what the nurse called “lumpish, and had no spring,” so that he was very
heavy to carry. When we went out to walk, the nurse always carried baby
till we got out of sight of the house; then she gave him to me; and when we
returned she always took him again at the same place. After taking one turn
on the heath “promenade,” we went down by the sand-pits, and walking on
till we came to a retired place, the nurse seated herself near a heather bush,
and took a book. My arms ached so very much that I should have been glad
to sit down too; but she told me to go on, the other children following me.
After I had walked some distance, baby awoke, and began to cry. I could
not comfort him. The more I tried, the louder he screamed, and the two little
children, frightened at his screams, began to cry too. I turned to go back,
but we had gone further than I thought; and the road being irregular, we had
picked our way round many tall bushes of heather, all looking so much
alike—that I did not know which way to take. In great trouble what to do,
and scarcely being able to hold the baby any longer, I shouted “Nurse!
nurse!” as loud as I could shout; but so great was the noise made by the
screaming of the children, that my voice could not be heard. Presently,
however, to my great relief, the nurse suddenly appeared from behind the
bush, near which we were sitting.

What a face of rage she had! “How dare you,” she said, “how dare you go
so far?” Then snatching the child from my arms, she would not hear a word;
but as soon as she had made him and the rest of the children quiet, she went
on abusing me very much indeed.

We were still some way from home when the church clock chimed a quarter
to two. Suddenly the nurse stopped, put her hand into her pocket, and
looked very much frightened. “I've left the book,” she said, “left it on the
bank; run—run directly—make haste—don't lose a moment, or it may be
gone.” I stood still; for I felt angry at having been scolded so undeservedly.
“Go! go this instant!” I was too late; the book was gone! I scarcely dared to
go back. “Not find it!” said the nurse, when I came up to her; “it must be
there; you've done this on purpose.” When we had reached home, she flung
the baby hurriedly into my arms. “I'll go myself,” she said.

The book I had seen her take out of her pocket looked very much like one
placed on a side-table in the room of which I had charge, and so great was
my curiosity to know if it really were the same, that I could not resist going
down to see; so putting the baby (who had begun to cry again) upon the
bed, and telling the little ones to sit still for a minute, down I went. The
book was not on the table. I was sure that I had dusted and placed it there
that very morning, and I now felt certain that that book was the lost one.
The nurse returned, but without the book. She seemed very much hurried,
and was very cross. She could not have been more so if the book had been
lost by any fault of mine. She asked me if I knew the name of it. I told her
that I did not; taking care not to mention my suspicion—nay, my certainty
—that it was the very book I had dusted and placed on the table that
morning. [pg 492] The next day a great change seemed to have come over
both the nurse and the cook; their manner was much kinder than ever it had
been before. Neither of them said a cross word; yet I was almost certain that
the nurse had been telling the cook that I had overheard what she had said
to my mistress. The cause of this change puzzled me at first, but I soon
suspected that they each wanted to coax me; the one to say nothing about
“the large appetite,” the other about the lost book.

Since the loss of the book, every time the bell had rung, my heart leaped as
though it would burst through my body, and I looked anxiously at Mary
Wild when she came into the kitchen again; but nothing came of all this.
One day, Mary, having a bad fit of toothache, I had to wait at table. That
very afternoon mistress sent to speak to me; she was sitting in the inner
drawing-room. Strange to say, that much as I had thought about the book, at
that very moment I had forgotten all about it, and almost started when

mistress said, “Fanny, I want to know if you have misplaced a book that
was on that table: it is nearly a week since I missed it, but not chancing to
want it till now, I forgot to make inquiry about it.” I turned very red. I could
not speak. My mistress looked questioningly into my face. “Do you know
where it is, Fanny?” “No—yes—no, indeed, ma'am, no.” “Fanny, Fanny! I
am sure you are not speaking the truth; there is something wrong—you do
know something about it.” And she looked fixedly on my face. I became
redder still, but did not answer. “Where is it? what is become of it?”
“Indeed, I have had nothing to do with the loss of that book.” “To do with
the loss? Then you allow that you do know that it is lost? How can you
know this without having something to do with it?” “Oh! pray, ma'am, pray,
pray ask the nurse.” “The nurse! what can she possibly have to do with the
loss of that book?” Again I was silent. The bell was rung, and the nurse
ordered to come down. A glance at her face told me that she knew what was
going on. “Nurse,” said my mistress, “Fanny asks me to go to you to
account for the loss of a book which has been missing for some days out of
this room. Do you know any thing about it?” “I, ma'am!” said the nurse,
pretending to be very much surprised. “Yet I can't say that I know nothing
about a book that was in this room.” Then turning to me—“Did you not put
it back again? you know very well that I threatened to tell mistress about it;
and I'm very sorry, now, that I did not tell her.”

The only word I could say was, “Nurse!”

“I am sure, ma'am,” said the nurse, “I should have been very sorry to say
any thing against her—and if you had not found her out, I should not have
told about her. She is but young, ma'am, and may improve—but, indeed,
ma'am, never in my life did I see a young girl tell a lie with such a face of
innocence.” I was bursting with shame and vexation. “May I speak, ma'am?
Oh! pray hear me—it was not I: it was she who lost the book. Do let me
speak, ma'am; pray let me tell you—” “No, you shall have no inducement to
tell more falsehoods. I fear I shall be obliged to send you home again; I can
not have any one with my children who tells untruths.” And she pointed to
the nurse to open the door for me. As she was doing so, nurse said, “She
told me, ma'am, how you had caught her reading one morning, when—”
Here she shut me out and herself in.

If I had had money enough to take me to Birmingham, I believe I should
not have staid in the house an hour longer; but how often have I been
thankful that I had not; for, if I had gone away then, nothing could ever
have cleared me in the eyes of my mistress, and I should have been
disgraced forever.

Though I had been five months in my place, I had written but two letters;
one to my aunt, the other to the matron. I was never allowed a light to take
up-stairs, so that I had no opportunity of writing there. It was late when the
servants came to bed that night; and, after having cried a great deal, I was
just dropping to sleep when they came into the room. I did not sleep long.
When I awoke, there was darkness in the room again, and the servants were
snoring. Then all at once the thought came into my head that I would get up
and write a letter to my aunt. I slipped on a few things. It was too dark for
me to be able to see any thing in the room, and I did not know where the
candle had been put. Very much disappointed, I was preparing to get into
bed again, when I remembered the lamp standing on the centre-table in the
inner drawing-room; that room of which I had the charge. I opened the door
softly, and found my way into the drawing-room. I flamed up a match,
which gave light long enough for me to find the lamp; then I flamed up
another, and lighted it. The lamp gave but a dull light; all in the house was
so quiet, and every thing looked so dusky, that I was frightened, and went
on trembling more than before. There was paper in the case before me, and
there were pens in the inkstand, but I never thought of using those. My own
paper and pens were under the tray of my work-box, and that was in the
kitchen. The lamp was not too large to be easily carried; so, taking it up
with care, I went into the kitchen. The two cats on the hearth roused up
when I opened the door. One rushed out and began to mew loudly. How
frightened I was! I waited, hoping the cats might settle again; but they
began mewing louder than ever, looking up to my face, and then rubbing
themselves against the meat-screen. I was sure that they smelt something
that they wanted me to give them; so I went toward the meat-screen to see
what it was. There I saw a hand-basket, and something wrapped up in a
cloth. Pushing the meat-screen cautiously aside, I lifted the basket out.
Within I found a medley of things that would have puzzled wiser heads than
mine to know how they could come together. There was a thick slice of
uncooked veal, two sausages, a slice of raw salmon, some green [pg 493]

pease, and seven new potatoes, half a pot of raspberry jam, a nutmeg, and
half a cucumber. I did not dare to untie the bundle—which was folded up
very carefully—but I could feel bits of candles, and a basin among the
oddments it seemed to contain. I put the basket quickly down again. The
cats had been mewing about me all this time. At length I did contrive to
escape. I had reached the drawing-room, placed the lamp on the table, when
I saw the two bits of burnt matches which I had forgotten to pick up, and
which might have left traces of my wanderings. There was another bit
somewhere. In my gladness to have remembered this, I moved the lamp
quickly, and in carrying it toward the floor, I knocked the glass against the
edge of the table; it fell to shivers, and the light was extinguished. What was
to be done? Nothing: there was nothing to be done but to leave things just
as they were, and to creep into bed again.

In the morning I hurried down, fearful lest any of the servants should
chance to go into the drawing-room before I had picked up the broken
glass. I opened the shutters, and soon found that the shattered glass was not
all the injury that had been done. There was lamp-oil on the beautiful
carpet! There seemed no end to my troubles.

“Broken the lamp-glass!” said the cook, as I passed through the kitchen
with the broken bits of glass; “what ever will you do?”—“I can do nothing
but tell mistress.”—“Then I'll tell you what to do; take my advice, and deny
it.” “Deny what?”—“Why, that you've broken the lamp-glass.”—“What!
tell my mistress a lie? how can you give me such wicked advice?”—“Well;
it's no business of mine,” said the cook; “if you won't tell her a lie, I'll tell
her the truth.” I determined, however, to speak first. I could not go about
my usual work till I had spoken to my mistress; and yet, when I heard the
dining-room door open, and knew that she would be coming up, I ran out of
the room, and went up-stairs; my courage failed me, and I hardly dared to
go down again. From the top of the stairs I saw her go into the room, and I
saw the cook following her. I expected every moment to be called. Soon the
door opened, and the cook came out. I heard her say, distinctly, “Indeed,
ma'am, I'm afraid she'll turn out badly; but I've done what I can to make her
confess.” At the sound of the opening of the door, with a sudden
determination, I had rushed down stairs, and was within a few steps of the
room as the cook came out. On seeing me, she shut the door quickly, and

turned quite red; then, speaking in a voice on purpose for my mistress to
hear, she said, “What! have you been listening?” I made no answer; but
went into the room.

There was an expression of displeasure on the face of my mistress as she
looked at me. She asked, “How did you break the lamp-glass? Tell me the
truth—for though I may pardon the accident, I will not pardon any
falsehood about it.”

I begged that I might tell her everything, and that I might begin from the
day when I came to my place. I did so. I told her all, and very much in the
same way that I have just been writing it now. She listened to me with great
attention, and at parts of what I told her, I could see her countenance change
very much indeed. When I had done, she said, “Fanny, you have told me
that which has shocked me very much. I can say nothing further to you till I
have spoken to Mr. Morgan; meantime you must be silent, and go on as
usual.”

Mr. Morgan was at that time from home, and not expected for some days.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Morgan had missed several bottles of wine from the
cellar. She had a distinct knowledge of three bottles that were not in their
places.

The morning after his arrival he did not go to London as usual. He and my
mistress were talking together in the study for a long time. I knew well what
they were talking about, and so flurried did I feel, that I could hardly get on
with my work. At length I met mistress as she was going up-stairs. She said
she was coming to bid me go into the study; and her manner was so kind
that I obeyed her without fear. My master, too, spoke very kindly to me. I
found that my mistress had written to tell him what had been passing at
home in his absence, and that he, chancing to be at Dudley, which is only a
short distance from Birmingham, had gone there to make further inquiry
about me; that he had been at the school, had seen the matron, and had also
seen my aunt. All that he had heard about me had satisfied him, and
convinced him that what I had told my mistress was nothing but the truth.
“Is this your handkerchief, Fanny?” said my master, taking up one from a
side table. “Yes, sir, it is,” I said, unfolding it, “and here is my name
marked; it was given to me by a favorite little schoolfellow, and I feared I

had lost it.”—“Where do you think I found this handkerchief,
Fanny?”—“Indeed, sir, I can't tell; but, thank you, sir, for I am so glad it is
found.” “I found it in the wine-cellar.” I must have looked very much
alarmed, for my mistress said kindly, “Don't look so frightened, Fanny.” My
master rang the bell: it was answered by Mary Wild. “Stay here,” he said;
“and, Fanny, go and tell the nurse to come down.” When the nurse entered,
he rang the bell again. No one came. Indeed, there was no one to come but
the cook; and that not being her bell, she did not think of answering it.
“Shall I tell her, sir?” said Mary Wild, who, as well as the nurse, now
beginning to suspect something was wrong, turned very pale. “No!” said
my master, angrily, “no one shall leave the room.” Just then the door
opened, and the cook entered. The plausible smooth face she had put on
was gone in an instant, on seeing what was the state of things. After a
moment's silence, he began “This handkerchief,” he said, “though marked
with Fanny's name, was not put in the wine-cellar by her.” He looked
sternly at the cook—“Silence!” he said, to the cook, when she tried [pg 494]
to speak. He then went on: “If the three bottles of wine stolen out of the
cellar are still in the house, they shall be found—here is a search warrant,
and at the door is a policeman, ready to enforce its execution. There is no
escape, and in confession is the best chance of mercy.” Mary Wild looked at
the cook. I shall never forget that woman's face at that moment. She seemed
choking with feelings that she tried to hide, and uncertain what it would be
the best for her to do; she went at last toward the door, and suddenly
opening it, was rushing out of the room and up-stairs. “Stop!” cried my
master, following her.—“I must go,” she said, “I am ill. This sudden shock
—to think that I—that it should come to this—to be suspected.”—And then
she screamed, and tried to throw herself into a fit; but the fit would not
come. Mr. Morgan said, “You had better be quiet, and submit quietly to
what you can not escape from.”—“I will,” she screamed out; “I have
nothing to fear—I am innocent; only let me go up-stairs; only let me have a
few minutes to—” “Not an instant,” said my master. He then opened the
window, and called to the policeman, who had been waiting in the garden.
The boxes of each of the servants were examined. In the cook's box were
found two of the bottles, besides many things belonging to my mistress—
cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, chamber-towels, silk-stockings, and many
other articles, marked with the names of visitors who had been staying in
the house. Folded up in some crumpled bits of paper, and put into the sleeve

of an old gown, was a silver fork, that had been lost more than a year ago,
and that mistress had supposed to have been stolen by the housemaid who
had lived there before Mary Wild came. In the nurse's box were several
things that looked very unlikely to be her own, but they did not belong to
mistress. In a corner of the nursery cupboard was the third bottle of wine;
that also had been opened. In Mary Wild's box there was nothing to excite
suspicion.

When the examination was over, master gave the cook in charge to the
policeman. The nurse was told to leave the house within an hour. She would
have had much to say, but master would not hear her.

A month's notice was given to Mary Wild. I was glad of it; for though I
knew that she had entered into many of the wicked cook's deceptions, there
was a something about her that made me think she would have been good,
if she had not been under such evil influence. All had been so sudden, that I
almost fancied it had been a dream. For a few days we went on without
other servants, and I thought things had never been so comfortable as they
were during this time; but Mary Wild was taken so very ill, that a doctor
was sent for. She became worse and worse, and I scarcely ever left her. In
her delirium she would talk about things that had passed between the cook
and herself; and though she did not know what she was saying, I felt sure
that what she said had been. A very long time she was ill; then a sudden
change took place: and she was out of danger. Poor thing! how quiet, and
patient, and sorrowful she was: and how grateful for every thing that was
done for her! Mistress was so much touched by the many signs of sorrow
Mary had shown, that she allowed her to remain in her place. Though I was
so young, only just seventeen, my mistress, knowing that I was fond of the
children, trusted them to my care. She engaged another nurse for three
months to “put me in the way.” At the end of that time she sent to the school
for another girl to fill the place which had been mine. Very great was my
delight to find that she was the one who had been my most favorite
schoolfellow; the very girl who had given me the handkerchief.

The cook was committed for trial; her sentence was six months'
imprisonment. What became of the nurse I never knew.

The Point Of Honor.

One evening in the autumn of the year 1842. seven persons, including
myself, were sitting and chatting in a state of hilarious gayety in front of
Señor Arguellas' country-house, a mile or so out of Santiago de Cuba, in the
Eastern Intendencia of the Queen of the Antilles, and once its chief capital,
when an incident occurred that as effectually put an extinguisher upon the
noisy mirth as if a bomb-shell had suddenly exploded at our feet. But first a
brief account of those seven persons, and the cause of their being so
assembled, will be necessary.

Three were American merchants—Southerners and smart traders,
extensively connected with the commerce of the Colombian archipelago,
and designing to sail on the morrow—wind and weather permitting, in the
bark Neptune, Starkey master and part owner—for Morant Bay, Jamaica;
one was a lieutenant in the Spanish artillery, and nephew of our host;
another was a M. Dupont, a young and rich creole, of mingled French and
Spanish parentage, and the reputed suitor for the hand of Donna Antonia—
the daughter and sole heiress of Señor Arguellas, and withal a graceful and
charming maiden of eighteen—a ripe age in that precocious clime; the sixth
guest was Captain Starkey, of the Neptune, a gentlemanly, fine-looking
English seaman of about thirty years of age; the seventh and last was
myself, at that time a mere youngster, and but just recovered from a severe
fit of sickness which a twelvemonth previously had necessitated my
removal from Jamaica to the much more temperate and equable climate of
Cuba, albeit the two islands are only distant about five degrees from each
other. I was also one of Captain Starkey's passengers, and so was Señor
Arguellas, who had business to wind up in Kingston. He was to be
accompanied by Señora Arguellas, Antonia, the young lieutenant, and M.
Dupont. The Neptune had brought a cargo of sundries, consisting of
hardware, cottons, et cetera, to Cuba, and was returning about half-laden
with goods. Among these, belonging to the American merchants, [pg 495]
were a number of barrels of gunpowder, that had proved unsalable in Cuba,
and which, it was thought, might find a satisfactory market in Jamaica.

There was excellent cabin-accommodation on board Captain Starkey's
vessel, and as the weather was fine, and the passage promised to be a brief
as well as pleasant one—the wind having shifted to the northwest, with the
intention, it seemed, of remaining there for some time—we were all, as I
have stated, in exceedingly good-humor, and discussing the intended trip,
Cuban, American, and European politics, the comparative merits of French
and Spanish wines, and Havanna and Alabama cigars, with infinite glee and
gusto.

The evening, too, was deliciously bright and clear. The breeze, pronounced
by Capt. Starkey to be rising to a five or six knot one at sea, only
sufficiently stirred the rich and odorous vegetation of the valleys, stretching
far away beneath us, gently to fan the heated faces of the party with its
grateful perfume, and slightly ripple the winding rivers, rivulets rather,
which every where intersect and irrigate the island, and which were now
glittering with the myriad splendors of the intensely-lustrous stars that
diadem a Cuban night. Nearly all the guests had drunk very freely of wine,
too much so, indeed; but the talk, in French, which all could speak
tolerably, did not profane the calm glory of the scene, till some time after
Señora Arguellas and her daughter had left us. The señor, I should state, was
still detained in town by business which it was necessary he should dispose
of previous to embarking for Jamaica.

“Do not go away,” said Señora Arguellas, addressing Captain Starkey, as
she rose from her seat, “till I see you again. When you are at leisure, ring
the sonnette on the table and a servant will inform me. I wish to speak
further with you relative to the cabin arrangements.”

Captain Starkey bowed. I had never, I thought, seen Antonia smile so
sweetly; and the two ladies left us. I do not precisely remember how it came
about, or what first led to it, but it was not very long before we were all
conscious that the conversation had assumed a disagreeable tone. It struck
me that possibly M. Dupont did not like the expression of Antonia's face as
she courtesied to Captain Starkey. This, however, would, I think, have
passed off harmlessly, had it not been that the captain happened to mention,
very imprudently, that he had once served as a midshipman on board the
English slave-squadron. This fanned M. Dupont's smouldering ill-humor

into a flame, and I gathered from his confused maledictions that he had
suffered in property from the exertions of that force. The storm of angry
words raged fiercely. The motives of the English for interfering with the
slave-traffic were denounced with contemptuous bitterness on the one side,
and as warmly and angrily defended on the other. Finally—the fact is, they
were both flustered with wine and passion, and scarcely knew what they
said or did—M. Dupont applied an epithet to the Queen of England, which
instantly brought a glass of wine full in his face from the hand of Captain
Starkey. They were all in an instant on their feet, and apparently sobered, or
nearly so, by the unfortunate issue of the wordy tumult.

Captain Starkey was the first to speak. His flushed and angry features paled
suddenly to an almost deathly white, and he stammered out, “I beg your
pardon, M. Dupont. It was wrong—very wrong in me to do so, though not
inexcusable.”

“Pardon? Mille tonnerres!” shouted Dupont, who was capering about in an
ecstasy of rage, and wiping his face with his handkerchief. “Yes, a bullet
through your head shall pardon you—nothing less!”

Indeed, according to the then notions of Cuban society, no other alternative
save the duello appeared possible. Lieutenant Arguellas hurried at once into
the house, and speedily returned with a case of pistols. “Let us proceed,” he
said, in a quick whisper, “to the grove yonder; we shall be there free from
interruption.” He took Dupont's arm, and both turned to move off. As they
did so, Mr. Desmond, the elder of the American gentlemen, stepped toward
Captain Starkey, who with recovered calmness, and with his arms folded,
was standing by the table, and said, “I am not entirely, my good sir, a
stranger to these affairs, and if I can be of service I shall—”

“Thank you, Mr. Desmond,” replied the English captain; “but I shall not
require your assistance. Lieutenant Arguellas, you may as well remain. I am
no duelist, and shall not fight M. Dupont.”

“What does he say?” exclaimed the lieutenant, gazing with stupid
bewilderment round the circle. “Not fight!”

The Anglo-Saxon blood, I saw, flushed as hotly in the veins of the
Americans as it did in mine at this exhibition of the white feather by one of
our race. “Not fight, Captain Starkey!” said Mr. Desmond, with grave
earnestness, after a painful pause: “you, whose name is in the list of the
British royal navy, say this! You must be jesting!”

“I am perfectly serious—I am opposed to dueling upon principle.”

“A coward upon principle!” fairly screamed Dupont, with mocking fury,
and at the same time shaking his clenched fist at the Englishman.

The degrading epithet stung like a serpent. A gleam of fierce passion broke
out of Captain Starkey's dark eyes, and he made a step toward Dupont, but
resolutely checked himself.

“Well, it must be borne! I was wrong to offer you personal violence,
although your impertinence certainly deserved rebuke. Still, I repeat I will
not fight with you.”

“But you shall give my friend satisfaction!” exclaimed Lieutenant
Arguellas, who was as much excited as Dupont; “or, by Heaven, I will post
you as a dastard not only throughout this island but Jamaica!”

Captain Starkey for all answer to this menace [pg 496] coolly rang the
sonnette, and desired the slave who answered it to inform Señora Arguellas
that he was about to leave, and wished to see her.

“The brave Englishman is about to place himself under the protection of
your aunt's petticoats, Alphonso!” shouted Dupont, with triumphant
mockery.

“I almost doubt whether Mr. Starkey is an Englishman,” exclaimed Mr.
Desmond, who, as well as his two friends, was getting pretty much
incensed; “but, at all events, as my father and mother were born and raised
in the old country, if you presume to insinuate that—”

Señora Arguellas at this moment approached, and the irate American with
some difficulty restrained himself. The lady appeared surprised at the

strange aspect of the company she had so lately left. She, however, at the
request of the captain, instantly led the way into the house, leaving the rest
of her visitors, as the French say, plantés là.

Ten minutes afterward we were informed that Captain Starkey had left the
house, after impressing upon Señora Arguellas that the Neptune would sail
the next morning precisely at nine o'clock. A renewed torrent of rage,
contempt, and scorn broke forth at this announcement, and a duel at one
time seemed inevitable between Lieutenant Arguellas and Mr. Desmond,
the last-named gentleman manifesting great anxiety to shoot somebody or
other in vindication of his Anglo-Saxon lineage. This, however, was
overruled, and the party broke up in angry disorder.

We were all on board by the appointed time on the following morning.
Captain Starkey received us with civil indifference, and I noticed that the
elaborate sneers which sat upon the countenances of Dupont and the
lieutenant did not appear in the slightest degree to ruffle or affect him; but
the averted eye and scornful air of Donna Antonia as she passed with
Señora Arguellas toward the cabin, drawing her mantilla tightly round her
as she swept by, as if—so I perhaps wrongfully interpreted the action—it
would be soiled by contact with a poltroon, visibly touched him—only,
however, for a few brief moments. The expression of pain quickly vanished,
and his countenance was as cold and stern as before. There was, albeit, it
was soon found, a limit to this, it seemed, contemptuous forbearance.
Dupont, approaching him, gave his thought audible expression, exclaiming,
loud enough for several of the crew to hear, and looking steadily in the
captain's face: “Lâche!” He would have turned away, but was arrested by a
gripe of steel. “Ecoutez, monsieur,” said Captain Starkey: “individually, I
hold for nothing whatever you may say; but I am captain and king in this
ship, and I will permit no one to beard me before the crew, and thereby
lessen my authority over them. Do you presume again to do so, and I will
put you in solitary confinement, perhaps in irons, till we arrive at Jamaica.”
He then threw off his startled auditor, and walked forward. The passengers,
colored as well as white, were all on board; the anchor, already apeak, was
brought home; the bows of the ship fell slowly off, and we were in a few
moments running before the wind, though but a faint one, for Point Morant.

No one could be many hours on board the Neptune without being fully
satisfied that, however deficient in dueling courage her captain might be, he
was a thorough seaman, and that his crew—about a dozen of as fine fellows
as I have ever seen—were under the most perfect discipline and command.
The service of the vessel was carried on as noiselessly and regularly as on
board a ship of war; and a sense of confidence, that should a tempest or
other sea-peril overtake us, every reliance might be placed in the
professional skill and energy of Captain Starkey, was soon openly or tacitly
acknowledged by all on board. The weather throughout happily continued
fine, but the wind was light and variable, so that for several days after we
had sighted the blue mountains of Jamaica, we scarcely appeared sensibly
to diminish the distance between them and us. At last the breeze again blew
steadily from the northwest, and we gradually neared Point Morant. We
passed it, and opened up the bay at about two o'clock in the morning, when
the voyage might be said to be over. This was a great relief to the cabin-
passengers—far beyond the ordinary pleasure to land-folk of escaping from
the tedium of confinement on shipboard. There was a constraint in the
behavior of every body that was exceedingly unpleasant. The captain
presided at table with freezing civility; the conversation, if such it could be
called, was usually restricted to monosyllables; and we were all very
heartily glad that we had eaten our last dinner in the Neptune. When we
doubled Point Morant, all the passengers except myself were in bed, and a
quarter of an hour afterward Captain Starkey went below, and was soon
busy, I understood, with papers in his cabin. For my part I was too excited
for sleep, and I continued to pace the deck fore and aft with Hawkins, the
first-mate, whose watch it was, eagerly observant of the lights on the well-
known shore, that I had left so many months before with but faint hopes of
ever seeing it again. As I thus gazed landward, a bright gleam, as of crimson
moonlight, shot across the dark sea, and turning quickly round, I saw that it
was caused by a tall jet of flame shooting up from the main hatchway,
which two seamen, for some purpose or other, had at the moment partially
opened. In my still weak state, the terror of the sight—for the recollection
of the barrels of powder on board flashed instantly across my mind—for
several moments completely stunned me, and but that I caught instinctively,
at the rattlings, I should have fallen prostrate on the deck. A wild outcry of
“Fire! fire!”—the most fearful cry that can be heard at sea—mingled with
and heightened the dizzy ringing in my brain, and I was barely sufficiently

conscious to discern, amid the runnings to and fro, and the incoherent
exclamations of the crew, the sinewy, athletic figure of the captain leap up,
[pg 497] as it were, from the companion-ladder to the deck, and with his
trumpet-voice command immediate silence, instantly followed by the order
again to batten down the blazing hatchway. This, with his own assistance,
was promptly effected, and then he disappeared down the forecastle. The
two or three minutes he was gone—it could scarcely have been more than
that—seemed interminable; and so completely did it appear to be
recognized that our fate must depend upon his judgment and vigor, that not
a word was spoken, nor a finger, I think, moved, till he reappeared, already
scorched and blackened with the fire, and dragging up what seemed a dead
body in his arms. He threw his burden on the deck, and passing swiftly to
where Hawkins stood, said in a low, hurried whisper, but audible to me;
“Run down and rouse the passengers, and bring my pistols from the cabin-
locker. Quick! Eternity hangs on the loss of a moment.” Then turning to the
startled but attentive seamen, he said in a rapid but firm voice: “You well
know, men, that I would not on any occasion or for any motive deceive you.
Listen, then, attentively. Yon drunken brute—he is Lieutenant Arguellas'
servant—has fired with his candle the spirits he was stealing, and the hold
is a mass of fire which it is useless to waste one precious moment in
attempting to extinguish.”

A cry of rage and terror burst from the crew, and they sprang impulsively
toward the boats, but the captain's authoritative voice at once arrested their
steps. “Hear me out, will you? Hurry and confusion will destroy us all, but
with courage and steadiness every soul on board may be saved before the
flames can reach the powder. And remember,” he added, as he took his
pistols from Hawkins and cocked one of them, “that I will send a bullet
after any man who disobeys me, and I seldom miss my aim. Now, then, to
your work—steadily, and with a will!”

It was marvelous to observe the influence his bold, confident, and
commanding bearing and words had upon the men. The panic-terror that
had seized them gave place to energetic resolution, and in an incredibly
short space of time the boats were in the water. “Well done, my fine
fellows! There is plenty of time, I again repeat. Four of you”—and he
named them—“remain with me. Three others jump into each of the large

boats, two into the small one, and bring them round to the landward side of
the ship. A rush would swamp the boats, and we shall be able to keep only
one gangway clear.”

The passengers were by this time rushing upon deck half-clad, and in a state
of the wildest terror, for they all knew there was a large quantity of
gunpowder on board. The instant the boats touched the starboard side of the
bark, the men, white as well as colored, forced their way with frenzied
eagerness before the women and children—careless, apparently, whom they
sacrificed so that they might themselves leap to the shelter of the boats from
the fiery volcano raging beneath their feet. Captain Starkey, aided by the
four athletic seamen he had selected for the duty, hurled them fiercely back.
“Back, back!” he shouted. “We must have funeral order here—first the
women and children, next the old men. Hand Señora Arguellas along; next
the young lady her daughter: quick!”

As Donna Antonia, more dead than alive, was about to be lifted into the
boat, a gush of flame burst up through the main hatchway with the roar of
an explosion; a tumultuous cry burst from the frenzied passengers, and they
jostled each other with frightful violence in their efforts to reach the
gangway. Dupont forced his way through the lane of seamen with the
energy of a madman, and pressed so suddenly upon Antonia that, but for the
utmost exertion of the captain's Herculean strength, she must have been
precipitated into the water.

“Back, unmanly dastard! back, dog!” roared Captain Starkey, terribly
excited by the lady's danger; and a moment after, seizing Dupont fiercely by
the collar, he added: “or if you will, look there but for a moment,” and he
pointed with his pistol-hand to the fins of several sharks plainly visible in
the glaring light at but a few yards' distance from the ship. “Men,” he
added, “let whoever presses forward out of his turn fall into the water.”

“Ay, ay, sir!” was the prompt mechanical response.

This terrible menace instantly restored order; the colored women and
children were next embarked, and the boat appeared full.

“Pull off,” was the order: “you are deep enough for safety.”

A cry, faint as the wail of a child, arose in the boat. It was heard and
understood.

“Stay one moment; pass along Señor Arguellas. Now, then, off with you,
and be smart!”

The next boat was quickly loaded; the colored lads and men, all but one,
and the three Americans, went in her.

“You are a noble fellow,” said Mr. Desmond, pausing an instant, and
catching at the captain's hand; “and I was but a fool to—”

“Pass on,” was the reply: “there is no time to bandy compliments.”

The order to shove off had passed the captain's lips when his glance
chanced to light upon me, as I leaned, dumb with terror, just behind him
against the vessel's bulwarks.

“Hold on a moment!” he cried. “Here is a youngster whose weight will not
hurt you;” and he fairly lifted me over, and dropped me gently into the boat,
whispering as he did so: “Remember me, Ned, to thy father and mother
should I not see them again.”

There was now only the small boat, capable of safely containing but eight
persons, and how, it was whispered among us—how, in addition to the two
seamen already in her, can she take off Lieutenant Arguellas, M. Dupont,
the remaining colored man, the four seamen, and Captain Starkey? They
were, however, all speedily embarked except the captain.

[pg 498]
“Can she bear another?” he asked, and although his voice was firm as ever,
his countenance, I noticed, was ashy pale, yet full as ever of unswerving
resolution.

“We must, and will, sir, since it's you; but we are dangerously overcrowded
now, especially with yon ugly customers swimming round us.”

“Stay one moment; I can not quit the ship while there's a living soul on
board.” He stepped hastily forward, and presently reappeared at the
gangway with the still senseless body of the lieutenant's servant in his arms,
and dropped it over the side into the boat. There was a cry of indignation,
but it was of no avail. The boat's rope the next instant was cast into the
water. “Now pull for your lives!” The oars, from the instinct of self-
preservation, instantly fell into the water, and the boat sprang off. Captain
Starkey, now that all except himself were clear of the burning ship, gazed
eagerly with eyes shaded with his hand in the direction of the shore.
Presently he hailed the headmost boat. “We must have been seen from the
shore long ago, and pilot-boats ought to be coming out, though I don't see
any. If you meet one, bid him be smart: there may be a chance yet.” All this
scene, this long agony, which has taken me so many words to depict very
imperfectly from my own recollection, and those of others, only lasted, I
was afterward assured by Mr. Desmond, eight minutes from the
embarkation of Señora Arguellas till the last boat left the ill-fated Neptune.

Never shall I forget the frightful sublimity of the spectacle presented by that
flaming ship, the sole object, save ourselves, discernible amidst the vast and
heaving darkness, if I may use the term, of the night and ocean, coupled as
it was with the dreadful thought that the heroic man to whose firmness and
presence of mind we all owed our safety was inevitably doomed to perish.
We had not rowed more than a couple of hundred yards when the flames,
leaping up every where through the deck, reached the rigging and the few
sails set, presenting a complete outline of the bark and her tracery of masts
and yards drawn in lines of fire! Captain Starkey, not to throw away the
chance he spoke of, had gone out to the end of the bowsprit, having first let
the jib and foresail go by the run, and was for a brief space safe from the
flames; but what was this but a prolongation of the bitterness of death?

The boats continued to increase the distance between them and the blazing
ship, amidst a dead silence broken only by the measured dip of the oars; and
many an eye was turned with intense anxiety shoreward with the hope of
descrying the expected pilot. At length a distinct hail—and I felt my heart
stop heating at the sound—was heard ahead, lustily responded to by the
seamen's throats, and presently afterward a swiftly-propelled pilot-boat shot
out of the thick darkness ahead, almost immediately followed by another.

“What ship is that?” cried a man standing in the bows of the first boat.

“The Neptune, and that is Captain Starkey on the bowsprit!”

I sprang eagerly to my feet, and with all the force I could exert, shouted: “A
hundred pounds for the first boat that reaches the ship!”

“That's young Mr. Mainwaring's face and voice!” exclaimed the foremost
pilot. “Hurra, then, for the prize!” and away both sped with eager vigor, but
unaware certainly of the peril of the task. In a minute or so another shore-
boat came up, but after asking a few questions, and seeing how matters
stood, remained, and lightened us of a portion of our living cargoes. We
were all three too deep in the water, the small boat perilously so.

Great God! the terrible suspense we all felt while this was going forward. I
can scarcely bear, even now, to think about it. I shut my eyes, and listened
with breathless, palpitating excitement for the explosion that should end all.
It came!—at least I thought it did, and I sprang convulsively to my feet. So
sensitive was my brain, partly no doubt from recent sickness as well as
fright, that I had mistaken the sudden shout of the boats' crews, for the
dreaded catastrophe. The bowsprit, from the end of which a rope was
dangling, was empty! and both pilots, made aware doubtless of the danger,
were pulling with the eagerness of fear from the ship. The cheering among
us was renewed again and again, during which I continued to gaze with
arrested breath and fascinated stare at the flaming vessel and fleeing pilot-
boats. Suddenly a pyramid of flame shot up from the hold of the ship,
followed by a deafening roar. I fell, or was knocked down, I know not
which; the boat rocked as if caught in a fierce eddy; next came the hiss and
splash of numerous heavy bodies falling from a great height into the water;
and then the blinding glare and stunning uproar were succeeded by a
soundless silence and a thick darkness, in which no man could discern his
neighbor. The stillness was broken by a loud, cheerful hail from one of the
pilot-boats: we recognized the voice, and the simultaneous and ringing
shout which burst from us assured the gallant seaman of our own safety,
and how exultingly we all rejoiced in his. Half an hour afterward we were
safely landed; and as the ship and cargo had been specially insured, the only
ultimate evil result of this fearful passage in the lives of the passengers and
crew of the Neptune was a heavy loss to the underwriters.

A piece of plate, at the suggestion of Mr. Desmond and his friends, was
subscribed for and presented to Captain Starkey at a public dinner given at
Kingston in his honor—a circumstance that many there will remember. In
his speech on returning thanks for the compliment paid him, he explained
his motive for resolutely declining to fight a duel with M. Dupont, half-a-
dozen versions of which had got into the newspapers. “I was very early left
an orphan,” he said, “and was very tenderly reared by a maternal aunt, Mrs.
——.” (He mentioned a name with which hundreds of newspaper readers in
England must [pg 499] be still familiar). “Her husband—as many here may
be aware—fell in a duel in the second month of wedlock. My aunt
continued to live dejectedly on till I had passed my nineteenth year; and so
vivid an impression did the patient sorrow of her life make on me—so
thoroughly did I learn to loathe and detest the barbarous practice that
consigned her to a premature grave, that it scarcely required the solemn
promise she obtained from me, as the last sigh trembled on her lips, to make
me resolve never, under any circumstances, to fight a duel. As to my
behavior during the unfortunate conflagration of the Neptune, which my
friend Mr. Desmond has spoken of so flatteringly, I can only say that I did
no more than my simple duty in the matter. Both he and I belong to a
maritime race, one of whose most peremptory maxims it is that the captain
must be the last man to quit or give up his ship. Besides, I must have been
the veriest dastard alive to have quailed in the presence of—of—that is, in
the presence of—circumstances which—in point of fact—that is—” Here
Captain Starkey blushed and boggled sadly: he was evidently no orator; but
whether it was the sly significance of Señor Arguellas' countenance, which
just then happened to be turned toward him, or the glance he threw at the
gallery where Señora Arguellas' grave placidity and Donna Antonia's bright
eyes and blushing cheeks encountered him, that so completely put him out,
I can not say; but he continued to stammer painfully, although the company
cheered and laughed with great vehemence and uncommon good-humor, in
order to give him time. He could not recover himself; and after floundering
about through a few more unintelligible sentences sat down, evidently very
hot and uncomfortable, though amidst a little hurricane of hearty cheers and
hilarious laughter.

I have but a few more words to say. Captain Starkey has been long settled at
the Havanna; and Donna Antonia has been just as long Mrs. Starkey. Three

little Starkeys have to my knowledge already come to town, and the captain
is altogether a rich and prosperous man; but though apparently permanently
domiciled in a foreign country, he is, I am quite satisfied, as true an
Englishman, and as loyal a subject of Queen Victoria, as when he threw the
glass of wine in the Cuban Creole's face. I don't know what has become of
Dupont; and, to tell the truth, I don't much care. Lieutenant Arguellas has
attained the rank of major: at least I suppose he must be the Major Arguellas
officially reported to be slightly wounded in the late Lopez buccaneering
affair. And I also am pretty well now, thank you!

Christmas In Germany.

Christmas-day came—presents were to be exchanged. My friend Albert B
—— and I were deputed to go to Bremen to make purchases, the choice
thereof being left to our discretion. This, be it understood, was for the
behoof of some of our gentlemen friends; the ladies had long been prepared
with their offerings, which almost, in every case, were the work of their
own hands.

We started on foot; it was genial frosty weather. At Oslebshausen, which is
half-way, we rested, and took a glass of wine. Then we continued our
march, and at last caught sight of the windmill, which marks the entrance to
the town. Breakfast was the first thing to be thought of, so we went and
breakfasted in a house situated in a street called the “Bishop's Needle.”
Then we hunted about in various shops, and finally arrived, not a little
laden, at the office of the Lesmona omnibus. Here we deposited our goods,
and secured our places; after which, as we had a couple of hours before us,
we repaired to Stehely and Jansen's, the chief café of Bremen, to pass the
time and read the papers.

Toward dusk we reached Lesmona, and our constituents immediately
selected, each according to his taste, the articles we had brought them. For
my part, as I was that evening a guest at the house of my friend the pastor, I
betook myself thither with the trifling gifts I had bought for his children. I
was destined to receive in return presents from them and other members of
his family. How they were exchanged, I shall presently relate. I begin at the
beginning of the ceremony; for the celebration of Christmas-day is, indeed,
a ceremony in most parts of Germany.

The pastor's house is, when you look at it in front, a long, low building,
with a prodigiously high thatched roof. If you go to the gable, however, you
will find that there are actually three stories in it, two being in the said roof.
The middle of the ground floor is occupied by a large hall, which gives
access to all the chambers, and has a branch leading to one end of the
edifice. At this end there is a door, on passing by which, you find yourself
in the place where the cows, pigs, and other animals are kept. When I speak
of the other animals, I should except the storks, who, on their arrival in
spring, from Egypt or elsewhere, find their usual basket-work habitations
about the chimneys all ready to receive them. One would imagine, by the
way, that they brought from their winter quarters something like the
superstition of the old inhabitants of the Nile valley, so great is the worship
of the Germans for these birds, and so enthusiastically is their arrival hailed.
No one would ever dare to murder a stork. A similar protection is extended
to nightingales. The consequense is, that, being unmolested, the “solemn
bird of night” becomes very tame. In the suburbs of Hamburg are numerous
villas, and there, in a friend's garden, I have passed and repassed under the
bough where, within the reach of my arm, a nightingale was singing. He not
only showed no fear, but, being of a vain character, as nightingales naturally
are, he strained his little throat the more that he saw I listened to him.

But to return to the pastor's house. In the corner of the hall of which I have
spoken, was the “Christmas Tree.” Some of those who [pg 500] read these
sketches may have seen an engraving of Luther on a Christmas evening, his
wife and children beside him. The tree represented in that engraving was
the exact prototype of the one I now saw. It was of a species of fir, and on
all its branches were fixed small wax-tapers. These, at the given hour, were
lighted. Immediately, a procession of the village-school children entered,

and placed themselves in order. Then the pastor appeared, and after a short
prayer gave out a psalm. He conducted the music himself, and, as he had for
some time been teaching the young people a little singing, it was much
better than usual, more especially as there were no braying men to spoil it.
The air was that brave old composition of the great reformer, Ein feste Burg
ist unser Gott (“A strong tower is our God”). Nothing nobler in psalmody
exists.

After another short prayer, and a few words by way of speech, sundry
rewards and prizes were distributed. The greater part of these were the
handiwork of the pastor's family. I refer, of course, to the useful articles of
dress and other things, which domestic female hands know how to sew, and
knit, and embroider. Many tracts were distributed. A blessing was
pronounced, and the children withdrew.

It was now our turn. The family assembled in the saloon—a fine apartment,
about thirty feet in length. A long table, covered with a white cloth,
extended down the centre. At this every one had his place—I among the
rest. But it was not for a repast. Each had previously entered and deposited
his or her Christmas boxes at the part of the table assigned to those to whom
they were offered. We all had thus a little heap. As the greatest secresy is
preserved up to the moment of the general entry, we had all the pleasure of
a surprise. The curiosity of the children, and also of those who were not
children, as they examined their gifts was most amusing. I, for my part,
received among other things the following:—Sundry articles got up by the
family fingers; a little box, covered with beads, for holding lucifer-matches;
a German toy, meant to be instructive; a long chain in beads, intended for
the decoration of a pipe. This pipe was in sugar, and was accompanied by a
note in verse. The note I still have, but the pipe melted away in the damp of
winter. I never could ascertain to whom I was indebted for this gift.

A little later, evening worship was celebrated, and then we supped. Long
that night, after I had laid my head on my pillow, was I kept awake by the
thoughts raised by the kind, hearty, and genial character of those with
whom I had passed the evening, and of the good, old-fashioned, hearty
ceremony in which I had participated.

Many a merry Christmas to these my friends!

The Miracle Of Life.

Of all Miracles, the most wonderful is that of Life—the common, daily life
which we carry about with us, and which every where surrounds us. The
sun and stars, the blue firmament, day and night, the tides and seasons, are
as nothing compared with it. Life—the soul of the world, but for which
creation were not!

It is our daily familiarity with Life, which obscures its wonders from us. We
live, yet remember it not. Other wonders attract our attention, and excite our
surprise; but this, the great wonder of the world, which includes all others,
is little regarded. We have grown up alongside of Life, with Life within us
and about us; and there is never any point in our existence, at which its
phenomena arrest our curiosity and attention. The miracle is hid from us by
familiarity, and we see it not.

Fancy the earth without Life!—its skeleton ribs of rock and mountain
unclothed by verdure, without soil, without flesh! What a naked, desolate
spectacle,—and how unlike the beautiful aspect of external nature in all
lands! Nature, ever-varied and ever-changing—coming with the spring, and
going to sleep with the winter—in constant rotation. The flower springs up,
blooms, withers, and falls, returning to the earth from whence it sprung,
leaving behind it the germs of future being; for nothing dies; not even Life,
which only gives up one form to assume another. Organization is traveling
in an unending circle.

The trees in summer put on their verdure; they blossom; their fruit ripens—
falls; what the roots gathered up out of the earth returns to earth again; the
leaves drop one by one, and decay, resolving themselves into new forms, to
enter into other organizations; the sap flows back to the trunk; and the
forest, wood, field, and brake compose themselves to their annual winter's
sleep. In spring and summer the birds sang in the boughs, and tended their
young brood; the whole animal kingdom rejoiced in their full bounding life;
the sun shone warm, and nature rejoiced in greenness. Winter lays its cold
chill upon this scene; but the same scene comes round again, and another

spring recommences the same “never-ending, still beginning” succession of
vital changes. We learn to expect all this, and become so familiar with it,
that it seldom occurs to us to reflect how much harmony and adaptation
there is in the arrangement—how much of beauty and glory there is every
where, above, around, and beneath us.

But were it possible to conceive an intelligent being, abstracted from our
humanity, endowed with the full possession of mind and reason, all at once
set down on the earth's surface—how many objects of surpassing interest
and wonder would at once force themselves on his attention. The verdant
earth, covered with its endless profusion of forms of vegetable life, from the
delicate moss to the oak which survives the revolutions of centuries; the
insect and animal kingdom, from the gnat which dances in the summer's
sunbeams, up to the higher forms of sentient being; birds, beasts of endless
diversity of form, instinct, and color; and, above all, Man—“Lord of the
lion heart and eagle eye;”—these would, to such an intelligence, be a source
of almost endless interest.

It is life which is the grand glory of the world [pg 501] it was the
consummation of creative power, at which the morning stars sang together
for joy. Is not the sun glorious because there are living eyes to be gladdened
by his beams? is not the fresh air delicious because there are living
creatures to inhale and enjoy it? are not odors fragrant, and sounds sweet,
and colors gorgeous, because there is the living sensation to appreciate
them? Without Life, what were they all? What were a Creator himself,
without life, intelligence, understanding, to know and adore Him, and to
trace His finger in the works that He hath made?

Boundless variety and perpetual change are exhibited in the living beings
around us. Take the class of insects alone: of these, not fewer than 100,000
distinct species are already known and described; and every day is adding
to the catalogue. Wherever you penetrate, that life can be sustained, you
find living beings to exist; in the depths of ocean, in the arid desert, or at the
icy polar regions. The air teems with life. The soil which clothes the earth
all round, is swarming with life, vegetable and animal. Take a drop of water,
and examine it with a microscope: lo! it is swarming with living creatures.
Within Life, exists other life, until it recedes before the powers of human

vision. The parasitic animalcule, which preys upon or within the body of a
larger animal, is itself preyed upon by parasites peculiar to itself. So minute
are living animalcules, that Ehrenberg has computed that not fewer than
five hundred millions can subsist in a single drop of water, and each of
these monads is endowed with its appropriate organs, possesses
spontaneous power of motion, and enjoys an independent vitality.

In the very ocean deeps, insects, by the labor of ages, are enabled to
construct islands, and lay the foundations of future continents. The coral
insect is the great architect of the southern ocean. First a reef is formed;
seeds are wafted to it, vegetation springs up, a verdant island exists; then
man takes possession, and a colony is formed.

Dig down into the earth, and from a hundred yards deep, throw up a portion
of soil—cover it so that no communication can take place between that
earth and the surrounding air. Soon you will observe vegetation springing
up—perhaps new plants, altogether unlike any thing heretofore grown in
that neighborhood. During how many thousands of years has the vitality of
these seeds been preserved deep in the earth's bosom! Not less wonderful is
the fact stated by Lord Lindsay, who took from the hand of an Egyptian
mummy a tuber, which must have been wrapped up there more than 2000
years before. It was planted, was rained and dewed upon, the sun shone on
it again, and the root grew, bursting forth and blooming into a beauteous
Dahlia!

At the North Pole, where you would expect life to become extinct, the snow
is sometimes found of a bright red color. Examine it by the microscope,
and, lo! it is covered with mushrooms, growing on the surface of the snow
as their natural abode.

A philosopher distills a portion of pure water, secludes it from the air, and
then places it under the influence of a powerful electric current. Living
beings are stimulated into existence, the acari Crossii appear in numbers!
Here we touch on the borders of a great mystery; but it is not at all more
mysterious than the fact of Life itself. Philosophers know nothing about it,
further than it is. The attempt to discover its cause, inevitably throws them
back upon the Great First Cause. Philosophy takes refuge in religion.

Yet man is never at rest in his speculations as to causes; and he contrives all
manner of theories to satisfy his demands for them. A favorite theory
nowadays is what is called the Development theory, which proceeds on the
assumption, that one germ of being was originally planted on the earth, and
that from this germ, by the wondrous power of Life, all forms of vegetable
and animal life have progressively been developed. Unquestionably, all
living beings are organized on one grand plan, and the higher forms of
living beings, in the process of their growth, successively pass through the
lower organized forms. Thus, the human being is successively a monad, an
a-vertebrated animal, an osseous fish, a turtle, a bird, a ruminant, a
mammal, and lastly an infant Man. Through all these types of organization,
Tiedemann has shown that the brain of man passes.

This theory, however, does nothing to explain the causes of life, or the
strikingly diversified, and yet determinate characters of living beings; why
some so far transcend others in the stages of development to which they
ascend, and how it is that they stop there—how it is that animals succeed
each other in right lines, the offspring inheriting the physical structure and
the moral disposition of their parents, and never, by any chance, stopping
short at any other stage of being—man, for instance, never issuing in a lion,
a fish, or a polypus. We can scarcely conceive it possible that, had merely
the Germ of Being been planted on the earth, and “set a-going,” any thing
like the beautiful harmony and extra ordinary adaptation which is every
where observable throughout the animated kingdoms of Nature, would have
been secured. That there has been a grand plan of organization, on which all
living beings have been formed, seems obvious enough; but to account for
the diversity of being, by the theory that plants and animals have gradually
advanced from lower to higher stages of being by an inherent power of self-
development, is at variance with known facts, and is only an attempt to get
rid of one difficulty by creating another far greater.

Chemists are equally at fault, in endeavoring to unvail the mysterious
processes of Life. Before its power they stand abashed. For Life controls
matter, and to a great extent overrules its combinations. An organized being
is not held together by ordinary chemical affinity; nor can chemistry do any
thing toward compounding organized tissues. The principles which enter
into the composition of the organized being are few, the chief being

charcoal and water, but into what wondrous forms does Life mould these
common [pg 502] elements! The chemist can tell you what these elements
are, and how they are combined, when dead; but when living, they resist all
his power of analysis. Rudolphi confesses that chemistry is able to
investigate only the lifeless remains of organized beings.

There are some remarkable facts connected with Animal Chemistry—if we
may employ the term—which show how superior is the principle of Life to
all known methods of synthesis and analysis. For example, much more
carbon or charcoal is regularly voided from the respiratory organs alone, of
all living beings—not to speak of its ejection in many other ways—than can
be accounted for, as having in any way entered the system. They also
produce and eject much more nitrogen than they inhale. The mushroom and
mustard plant, though nourished by pure water containing no nitrogen, give
it off abundantly; the same is the case with zoophytes attached to rocks at
the bottom of the sea; and reptiles and fishes contain it in abundance,
though living and growing in pure water only. Again, plants which grow on
sand containing not a particle of lime, are found to contain as much of this
mineral as those which grow in a calcareous soil; and the bones of animals
in New South Wales, and other districts where not an atom of lime is to be
found in the soil, or in the plants from which they gather their food, contain
the usual proportion of lime, though it remains an entire mystery to the
chemist where they can have obtained it. The same fact is observable in the
egg-shells of hens, where lime is produced in quantities for which the kind
of food taken is altogether inadequate to account: as well as in the
enormous deposits of coral-rock, consisting of almost pure lime, without
any manifest supply of that ingredient. Chemistry fails to unravel these
mysterious facts; nor can it account for the abundant production of soda, by
plants growing on a soil containing not an atom of soda in any form: nor of
gold in bezoards; nor of copper in some descriptions of shell-fish. These
extraordinary facts seem to point to this—that many, if not most, of the
elements which chemists have set down as simple, because they have failed
to reduce them further, are in reality compound; and that what we regard as
Elements, do not signify matters that are undecompoundable, but which are
merely undecompounded by chemical processes. Life, however, which is
superior to human powers of analysis, resolves and composes the ultimate

atoms of things after methods of its own, but which to chemists will
probably ever remain involved in mystery.

The last mystery of Life is Death. Such is the economy of living beings,
that the very actions which are subservient to their preservation, tend to
exhaust and destroy them. Each being has its definite term of life, and on
attaining its acme of perfection, it begins to decay, and at length ceases to
exist. This is alike true of the insect which perishes within the hour, and of
the octogenarian who falls in a ripe old age. Love provides for the
perpetuation of the species. “We love,” says Virey, “because we do not live
forever: we purchase love at the expense of our life.” To die, is as
characteristic of organized beings as to live. The one condition is necessary
to the other. Death is the last of life's functions. And no sooner has the
mysterious principle of vitality departed, than the laws of matter assert their
power over the organized frame.

“Universal experience teaches us,” says Liebig, “that all organized beings,
after death, suffer a change, in consequence of which their bodies gradually
vanish from the surface of the earth. The mightiest tree, after it is cut down,
disappears, with the exception, perhaps of the bark, when exposed to the
action of the air for thirty or forty years. Leaves, young twigs, the straw
which is added to the soil as manure, juicy fruits, &c., disappear much more
quickly. In a still shorter time, animal matters lose their cohesion; they are
dissipated into the air, leaving only the mineral elements which they had
derived from the soil.

“This grand natural process of the dissolution of all compounds formed in
living organizations, begins immediately after death, when the manifold
causes no longer act under the influence of which they were produced. The
compounds formed in the bodies of animals and of plants, undergo, in the
air, and with the aid of moisture, a series of changes, the last of which are,
the conversion of their carbon into carbonic acid, of their hydrogen into
water, of their nitrogen into ammonia, of their sulphur into sulphuric acid.
Thus their elements resume the forms in which they can again serve as food
to a new generation of plants and animals. Those elements which had been
derived from the atmosphere take the gaseous form and return to the air;
those which the earth had yielded, return to the soil. Death, followed by the

dissolution of the dead generation, is the source of life for a new one. The
same atom of carbon which, as a constituent of a muscular fibre in the heart
of a man, assists to propel the blood through his frame, was perhaps a
constituent of the heart of one of his ancestors; and any atom of nitrogen in
our brain has perhaps been a part of the brain of an Egyptian or of a negro.
As the intellect of the men of this generation draws the food required for its
development and cultivation from the products of the intellectual activity of
former times, so may the constituents or elements of the bodies of a former
generation pass into, and become parts of our own frames.”

The greatest mystery of all remains. What of the Spirit—the Soul? The vital
principle which bound the frame together has been dissolved; what of the
Man, the being of high aspirations, “looking before and after,” and whose
“thoughts wandered through eternity?” The material elements have not
died, but merely assumed new forms. Does not the spirit of man, which is
ever at enmity with nothingness and dissolution, live too? Religion in all
ages has dealt with this great mystery, and here we leave it with confidence
in the solution which it offers.

[pg 503]

Personal Sketches And Reminiscences. By
Mary Russell Mitford.
2

Recollections Of Childhood.

Most undoubtedly I was a spoilt child. When I recollect certain passages of
my thrice happy early life, I can not have the slightest doubt about the
matter, although it contradicts all foregone conclusions, all nursery and
school-room morality, to say so. But facts are stubborn things. Spoilt I was.
Every body spoilt me, most of all the person whose power in that way was
greatest, the dear papa himself. Not content with spoiling me in-doors, he
spoilt me out. How well I remember his carrying me round the orchard on
his shoulder, holding fast my little three-year-old feet, while the little hands
hung on to his pig-tail, which I called my bridle (those were days of pig-
tails), hung so fast, and tugged so heartily, that sometimes the ribbon would
come off between my fingers, and send his hair floating, and the powder
flying down his back. That climax of mischief was the crowning joy of all. I
can hear our shouts of laughter now.

Nor were these my only rides. This dear papa of mine, whose gay and
careless temper all the professional etiquette of the world could never tame
into the staid gravity proper to a doctor of medicine, happened to be a
capital horseman; and abandoning the close carriage, which, at that time,
was the regulation conveyance of a physician, almost wholly to my mother,
used to pay his country visits on a favorite blood-mare, whose extreme
docility and gentleness tempted him, after certain short trials round our old
course, the orchard, into having a pad constructed, perched upon which I
might occasionally accompany him, when the weather was favorable, and
the distance not too great. A groom, who had been bred up in my
grandfather's family, always attended us; and I do think that both Brown
Bess and George liked to have me with them almost as well as my father
did. The old servant proud, as grooms always are, of a fleet and beautiful
horse, was almost as proud of my horsemanship; for I, cowardly enough,
Heaven knows, in after-years, was then too young and too ignorant for fear
—if it could have been possible to have had any sense of danger when
strapped so tightly to my father's saddle, and inclosed so fondly by his

strong and loving arm. Very delightful were those rides across the breezy
Hampshire downs on a sunny summer morning; and grieved was I when a
change of residence from a small town to a large one, and going among
strange people who did not know our ways, put an end to this perfectly
harmless, if somewhat unusual pleasure.

But the dear papa was not my only spoiler. His example was followed, as
bad examples are pretty sure to be, by the rest of the household. My maid
Nancy, for instance, before we left Hampshire, married a young farmer; and
nothing would serve her but I must be bridesmaid. And so it was settled.

She was married from her own home, about four miles from our house, and
was to go to her husband's after the ceremony. I remember the whole scene
as if it were yesterday! How my father took me himself to the church-yard
gate, where the procession was formed, and how I walked next to the young
couple hand-in-hand with the bridegroom's man, no other than the village
blacksmith, a giant of six-feet-three, who might have served as a model for
Hercules. Much trouble had he to stoop low enough to reach down to my
hand; and many were the rustic jokes passed upon the disproportioned pair,
who might fitly have represented Brobdignag and Liliput. My tall colleague
proved, however, as well-natured as giants commonly are every where but
in fairy tales, and took as good care of his little partner as if she had been a
proper match for him in age and size.

In this order, followed by the parents on both sides, and a due number of
uncles, aunts, and cousins, we entered the church, where I held the glove
with all the gravity and importance proper to my office; and so contagious
is emotion, and so accustomed was I to sympathize with Nancy, that when
the bride cried, I could not help crying for company. But it was a love-
match, and between smiles and blushes Nancy's tears soon disappeared, and
so by the same contagion did mine. The happy husband helped his pretty
wife into her own chaise-cart, my friend the blacksmith lifted me in after
her, and we drove gayly to the large, comfortable farm-house where her
future life was to be spent.

It was a bright morning in May, and I still remember when we drove up to
the low wall which parted the front garden from the winding village road,
the mixture of affection and honest pride which lighted up the face of the

owner. The square, substantial brick house, covered with a vine, the brick
porch garlanded with honey-suckles and sweet-brier, the espalier apple-
trees on either side the path in full flower, the double row of thrift with its
dull pink bloom, the stocks and wall-flowers under the window, the huge
barns full of corn, the stacks of all shapes and sizes in the rick-yard, cows
and sheep and pigs and poultry told a pleasant tale of rural comfort and
rural affluence.

The bride was taken to survey her new dominions by her proud bridegroom,
and the blacksmith finding me, I suppose, easier to carry than lead,
followed close upon their steps with me in his arms.

Nothing could exceed the good-nature of my country beau; he pointed out
bantams and peafowls, and took me to see a tame lamb, and a tall,
staggering calf, born that morning; but for all that, I do not think I should
have submitted so quietly to the indignity of being carried, I, who had
ridden thither on Brown Bess, and was at that instant filling the ostensible
place of bridesmaid, if it had not been for the chastening influence of a little
touch of fear. Entering the [pg 504] poultry-yard I had caught sight of a
certain turkey-cock, who erected that circular tail of his, and swelled out his
deep-red comb and gills after a fashion familiar to that truculent bird, but
which up to the present hour I am far from admiring. A turkey at Christmas
well roasted with bread sauce, may have his merits; but if I meet him alive
in his feathers, especially when he swells them out and sticks up his tail, I
commonly get out of his way even now, much more sixty years ago. So I let
the blacksmith carry me.

Then we went to the dairy, so fresh and cool and clean—glittering with
cleanliness! overflowing with creamy riches! and there I had the greatest
enjoyment of my whole day, the printing with my own hands a pat of butter,
and putting it up in a little basket covered with a vine leaf, to take home for
the dear mamma's tea. Then we should have gone to the kitchen, the back
kitchen, the brew-house, the wash-house, and the rest of the bride's new
territories, but this part of the domicil was literally too hot to hold us; the
cooking of the great wedding dinner was in full activity, and the bridegroom
himself was forced to retreat before his notable mother, who had come to
superintend all things for the day.

So back we drew to the hall, a large square brick apartment, with a beam
across the ceiling, a wide yawning chimney, and wooden settles with backs
to them; where many young people being assembled, and one of them
producing a fiddle, it was agreed to have a country dance until dinner
should be ready, the bride and bridegroom leading off, and I following with
the bridegroom's man.

Oh, the blunders, the confusion, the merriment of that country dance! No
two people attempted the same figure; few aimed at any figure at all; each
went his own way; many stumbled; some fell, and every body capered,
laughed, and shouted at once. My partner prudently caught me up in his
arms again, for fear of my being knocked down and danced over, which,
considering some of the exploits of some of the performers, seemed by no
means impossible, and would have been a worse catastrophe than an
onslaught of the turkey-cock.

A summons to dinner put an end to the glee. Such a dinner! The plenty of
Camacho's wedding was but a type of my Nancy's. Fish from the great
pond, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, boiled fowls and a gammon of
bacon, a green goose and a sucking pig, plum puddings, apple pies, cheese-
cakes and custards, formed a part of the bill of fare, followed by home-
brewed beer and home-made wine, by syllabub, and by wedding cake.
Every body ate enough for four, and there was four times more than could
by any possibility be eaten. I have always thought it one of the strongest
proofs of sense and kindness in my pretty maid, that she rescued me from
the terrible hospitality of her mother-in-law, and gave me back unscathed
into my father's hands, when, about three o'clock, he arrived to reclaim me.

The affluence and abundance of that gala day—the great gala of a life-time
—in that Hampshire farm-house, I have never seen surpassed.

This was my first appearance as a bridesmaid. My next, which took place
about a twelvemonth after, was of a very different description.

A first cousin of my father, the daughter of his uncle and guardian, had, by
the death of her mother's brother, become a wealthy heiress; and leaving her
picturesque old mansion in Northumberland, Little Harle Tower, a true
border keep overhanging the Warsbeck, for a journey to what the

Northumbrians of that day emphatically call “the South,” came after a
season in London to pass some months with us. At our house she became
acquainted with the brother of a Scotch duke, an Oxford student, who,
passing the long vacation with his mother, had nothing better to do than to
fall in love. Each had what the other wanted—the lady money, the
gentleman rank; and as his family were charmed with the match, and hers
had neither the power nor the wish to oppose it, every thing was arranged
with as little delay as lawyers, jewelers, coach-makers, and mantua-makers
would permit.

How the first step in the business, the inevitable and awful ceremonial of a
declaration of love and a proposal of marriage, was ever brought about, has
always been to me one of the most unsolvable of mysteries—an enigma
without the word.

Lord Charles, as fine a young man as one should see in a summer's day, tall,
well-made, with handsome features, fair capacity, excellent education, and
charming temper, had an infirmity which went nigh to render all these good
gifts of no avail: a shyness, a bashfulness, a timidity most painful to
himself, and distressing to all about him. It is not uncommon to hear a quiet,
silent man of rank unjustly suspected of pride and haughtiness; but there
could be no such mistake here—his shamefacedness was patent to all men. I
myself, a child not five years old, one day threw him into an agony of
blushing, by running up to his chair in mistake for my papa. Now I was a
shy child, a very shy child, and as soon as I arrived in front of his lordship,
and found that I had been misled by a resemblance of dress, by the blue
coat and buff waistcoat, I first of all crept under the table, and then flew to
hide my face in my mother's lap; my poor fellow-sufferer, too big for one
place of refuge, too old for the other, had nothing for it but to run away,
which, the door being luckily open, he happily accomplished.

That a man with such a temperament, who could hardly summon courage
enough to say, “How d'ye do?” should ever have wrought himself up to the
point of putting the great question, was wonderful enough; that he should
have submitted himself to undergo the ordeal of what was called in those
days a public wedding, was more wonderful still.

Perhaps the very different temper of the lady may offer some solution to the
last of these riddles; perhaps (I say it in all honor, for there is [pg 505] no
shame in offering some encouragement to a bashful suitor) it may assist us
in expounding them both.

Of a certainty, my fair cousin was pre-eminently gifted with those very
qualities in which her lover was deficient. Every thing about her was
prompt and bright, cheerful and self-possessed. Nearly as tall as himself,
and quite as handsome, it was of the beauty that is called showy—a showy
face, a showy figure, a showy complexion. We felt at a glance that those
radiant, well-opened, hazel eyes, had never quailed before mortal glance,
and that that clear, round cheek, red and white like a daisy, had never been
guilty of a blush in its whole life. Handsome as she was, it was a figure that
looked best in a riding-habit, and a face that of all head-dresses, best
became a beaver hat; just a face and figure for a procession; she would not
have minded a coronation: on the contrary, she would have been enchanted
to have been a queen-regent; but, as a coronation was out of the question,
she had no objection, taking the publicity as a part of the happiness, to a
wedding as grand as the resources of a country town could make it.

So a wedding procession was organized, after the fashion of Sir Charles
Grandison, comprising the chief members of each family, especially of the
ducal one; an infinite number of brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins
and clansfolk, friends and acquaintances, all arranged in different carriages,
according to their rank; ladies, gentlemen, servants, and horses, decorated
with white and silver favors, in so long a line, that it extended from Coley
Avenue to St. Mary's Church. The first carriage, a low phaeton, drawn by
ponies led by grooms, containing three children, two of five and six years
old, niece and nephew of the bridegroom, who, with myself (already a lady
of experience in that line), were to officiate as bride-maidens and
bridegroom's man; the last, also an open carriage, with only the bride and
my dear papa, who gave her away.

How well I recollect the crowd of the street, the crowd of the church-yard,
the crowd of the church! There was no crying at this wedding though; no
crying, and far fewer smiles.

The young couple proceeded to Bath and Clifton from the church door; and
the rest of the procession returned to our house to eat bridecake, drink to the
health of the new-married pair, and be merry at their leisure; after which
many dispersed, but the members of the two families and the more intimate
friends remained to dinner; and in the confusion of preparing to entertain so
large a party, the servants, even those belonging to the nursery, were
engaged in different ways, and we children, left to our own devices, and
finding nearly the whole house free to our incursions, betook ourselves to a
game at hide-and-seek.

Now in honor of the day, and of the grand part we had filled in the grand
ceremony of the morning, we small people had been arrayed in white from
top to toe, Master Martin in a new suit of jean, richly braided, his sister and
myself in clear muslin frocks, edged with lace, and long Persian sashes, the
whole width of the silk, fringed with silver, while all parties, little boy and
little girls, had white beaver hats and heavy ostrich plumes. We young
ladies had, as matter of course, that instinctive respect for our own finery
which seems an innate principle in womankind; moreover, we were very
good children, quiet, orderly, and obedient. Master Martin, on the other
hand, our elder by a year, had some way or other imbibed the contempt at
once for fine clothes and for the authorities of the nursery, which is not
uncommon among his rebellious sex: so the first time it fell to his lot to
hide, he ensconced himself in the very innermost recesses of the coal-hole,
from which delightful retirement he was dragged, after a long search, by his
own maid, who had at last awakened from the joys of gossiping and making
believe to help in the housekeeper's room, to the recollection that Lady
Mary might possibly inquire after her children. The state of his apparel and
of her temper may be more easily imagined than described. He, duke's
grandson though he were, looked like nothing better or worse than a
chimney-sweeper. She stormed like a fury. But as all the storming in the
world would not restore the young gentleman or his bridal suit to their
pristine state of cleanliness, she took wit in her anger and put him to bed, as
a measure partly of punishment, partly of concealment; the result of which
was, that he, the culprit, thoroughly tired with excitement and exercise, with
play and display, and well stuffed with dainties to keep him quiet, was
consigned to his comfortable bed, while we, pattern little girls, had to
undergo the penalty of making our appearance and our courtesies in the

drawing-room, among all the fine folks of our Camacho's wedding, and to
stay there, weariest of the many weary, two or three hours beyond our
accustomed time. With so little justice are the rewards and punishments of
this world distributed—even in the nursery!

Married Poets.—Elizabeth Barrett Browning—
Robert Browning.

Married poets! Charming words are these, significant of congenial gifts,
congenial labor, congenial tastes;—quick and sweet resources of mind and
of heart, a long future of happiness, live in those two words. And the reality
is as rare as it is charming. Married authors we have had of all ages and of
all countries; from the Daciers, standing stiff and stately under their
learning, as if it were a load, down to the Guizots, whose story is so pretty,
that it would sound like a romance to all who did not know how often
romance looks pale beside reality; from the ducal pair of Newcastle,
walking stately and stiff under their strawberry-leafed coronets, to William
and Mary Howitt, ornaments of a sect to whom coronets are an
abomination. Married authors have been plentiful as blackberries, but
married poets have been rare indeed! The last instance, too, was rather a
warning than an example. When Caroline Bowles changed her own loved
and honored name to become the wife of the [pg 506] great and good man
Robert Southey, all seemed to promise fairly, but a slow and fatal disease
had seized him even before the wedding-day, and darkened around him to
the hour of his death. In the pair of whom I am now to speak, the very
reverse of this sad destiny has happily befallen, and the health of the bride,
which seemed gone forever, has revived under the influence of the climate
of Italy, of new scenes, new duties, a new and untried felicity.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is too dear to me as a friend to be spoken of
merely as a poetess. Indeed such is the influence of her manners, her
conversation, her temper, her thousand sweet and attaching qualities, that
they who know her best are apt to lose sight altogether of her learning and
of her genius, and to think of her only as the most charming person that
they have ever met. But she is known to so few, and the peculiar
characteristics of her writings, their purity, their tenderness, their piety, and
their intense feeling of humanity and of womanhood, have won for her the

love of so many, that it will gratify them without, I trust, infringing on the
sacredness of private intercourse to speak of her not wholly as a poetess,
but a little as a woman. When in listening to the nightingale, we try to catch
a glimpse of the shy songster, we are moved by a deeper feeling than
curiosity.

My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Barrett commenced about fifteen
years ago. She was certainly one of the most interesting persons that I had
ever seen. Every body who then saw her said the same; so that it is not
merely the impression of my partiality, or my enthusiasm. Of a slight,
delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most
expressive face, large tender eyes richly fringed by dark eye-lashes, a smile
like a sun-beam, and such a look of youthfulness, that I had some difficulty
in persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went together to Chiswick, that
the translatress of the “Prometheus” of Æschylus, the authoress of the
“Essay on Mind,” was old enough to be introduced into company, in
technical language, was out. Through the kindness of another invaluable
friend, to whom I owe many obligations, but none so great as this, I saw
much of her during my stay in town. We met so constantly and so familiarly
that, in spite of the difference of age, intimacy ripened into friendship, and
after my return into the country, we corresponded freely and frequently, her
letters being just what letters ought to be—her own talk put upon paper.

The next year was a painful one to herself and to all who loved her. She
broke a blood-vessel upon the lungs, which did not heal. If there had been
consumption in the family that disease would have intervened. There were
no seeds of the fatal English malady in her constitution, and she escaped.
Still, however, the vessel did not heal, and after attending her for above a
twelvemonth at her father's house in Wimpole-street, Dr. Chambers, on the
approach of winter, ordered her to a milder climate. Her eldest brother, a
brother in heart and in talent worthy of such a sister, together with other
devoted relatives, accompanied her to Torquay, and there occurred the fatal
event which saddened her bloom of youth, and gave a deeper hue of
thought and feeling, especially of devotional feeling, to her poetry. I have so
often been asked what could be the shadow that had passed over that young
heart, that now that time has softened the first agony it seems to me right

that the world should hear the story of an accident in which there was much
sorrow, but no blame.

Nearly a twelvemonth had passed, and the invalid, still attended by her
affectionate companions, had derived much benefit from the mild sea
breezes of Devonshire. One fine summer morning her favorite brother,
together with two other fine young men, his friends, embarked on board a
small sailing-vessel, for a trip of a few hours. Excellent sailors all, and
familiar with the coast, they sent back the boatmen, and undertook
themselves the management of the little craft. Danger was not dreamt of by
any one; after the catastrophe, no one could divine the cause, but in a few
minutes after their embarkation, and in sight of their very windows, just as
they were crossing the bar, the boat went down, and all who were in her
perished. Even the bodies were never found. I was told by a party who was
traveling that year in Devonshire and Cornwall, that it was most affecting to
see on the corner houses of every village street, on every church-door, and
almost on every cliff for miles and miles along the coast, handbills, offering
large rewards for linens cast ashore marked with the initials of the beloved
dead; for it so chanced that all the three were of the dearest and the best;
one, I believe, an only son, the other the son of a widow.

This tragedy nearly killed Elizabeth Barrett. She was utterly prostrated by
the horror and the grief, and by a natural but a most unjust feeling, that she
had been in some sort the cause of this great misery. It was not until the
following year that she could be removed in an invalid carriage, and by
journeys of twenty miles a day, to her afflicted family and her London
home. The house that she occupied at Torquay had been chosen as one of
the most sheltered in the place. It stood at the bottom of the cliffs, almost
close to the sea; and she told me herself, that during that whole winter the
sound of the waves rang in her ears like the moans of one dying. Still she
clung to literature and to Greek; in all probability she would have died
without that wholesome diversion to her thoughts. Her medical attendant
did not always understand this. To prevent the remonstrances of her friendly
physician, Dr. Barry, she caused a small edition of Plato to be so bound as
to resemble a novel. He did not know, skillful and kind though he were, that
to her such books were not an arduous and painful study, but a consolation
and a delight.

Returned to London, she began the life which she continued for so many
years, confined to one large and commodious but darkened chamber
admitting only her own affectionate family and a few devoted friends (I,
myself, have often joyfully [pg 507] traveled five-and-forty miles to see her,
and returned the same evening, without entering another house); reading
almost every book worth reading in almost every language, and giving
herself, heart and soul, to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the
priestess.

Gradually her health improved. About four years ago she married Mr.
Browning, and immediately accompanied him to Pisa. They then settled at
Florence; and this summer I have had the exquisite pleasure of seeing her
once more in London, with a lovely boy at her knee, almost as well as ever,
and telling tales of Italian rambles, of losing herself in chestnut forests, and
scrambling on mule-back up the sources of extinct volcanoes. May Heaven
continue to her such health and such happiness!

The same visit to London that brought me acquainted with my beloved
friend, Elizabeth Barrett, first gave me a sight of Mr. Browning. It was at a
period that forms an epoch in the annals of the modern drama—the first
representation of “Ion.”

I had the honor and pleasure of being the inmate of Mr. and Mrs. Serjeant
Talfourd (my accomplished friend has since worthily changed his
professional title—but his higher title of poet is indelible), having been, I
believe, among the first who had seen that fine play in manuscript. The
dinner party consisted merely of Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Landor, and I think
Mr. Forster. By a singular coincidence it was our host's birthday, and no one
present can forget the triumph of the evening—a triumph of no common
order as regarded the number, the quality, or the enthusiasm of the
audience; the boxes being crammed to the ceiling, and the pit filled, as in an
elder day, with critics and gentlemen.

A large party followed the poet home to supper, a party comprising
distinguished persons of almost every class; lawyers, authors, actors, artists,
all were mingled around that splendid board; healths were drunk and
speeches spoken, and it fell to the lot of the young author of “Paracelsus” to
respond to the toast of “The Poets of England.” That he performed this task

with grace and modesty, and that he looked still younger than he was, I well
remember; but we were not introduced, and I knew him only by those
successive works which redeemed the pledge that “Paracelsus” had given,
until this very summer, when going to London purposely to meet my
beloved friend, I was by her presented to her husband. Ah! I hope it will not
be fifteen years before we look each other in the face again!

Incidents Of A Visit At The House Of William
Cobbett.

The name of Blamire has always a certain interest for me, in consequence
of a circumstance, which, as it took place somewhere about five-and-forty
years ago, and has reference to a flirtation of twenty years previous, there
can not now be much harm in relating.

Being with my father and mother on a visit about six miles from
Southampton, we were invited by a gentleman of the neighborhood to meet
the wife and daughters of a certain Dr. Blamire. “An old friend of yours and
mine,” quoth our inviter to my father. “Don't you remember how you used
to flirt with the fair lady when you and Babington were at Haslar? Faith, if
Blamire had not taken pity on her, it would have gone hard with the poor
damsel! However, he made up to the disconsolate maiden, and she got over
it. Nothing like a new love for chasing away an old one. You must dine with
us to-morrow. I shall like to see the meeting.”

My father did not attempt to deny the matter. Men never do. He laughed, as
all that wicked sex do laugh at such sins twenty years after, and professed
that he should be very glad to shake hands with his old acquaintance. So the
next day we met.

I was a little curious to see how my own dear mother, my mamma that was,
and the stranger lady, my mamma that might have been, would bear
themselves on the occasion. At first, my dear mother, an exceedingly
ladylike, quiet person, had considerably the advantage, being prepared for
the recontre and perfectly calm and composed; while Mrs. Blamire, taken, I
suspect, by surprise, was a good deal startled and flustered. This state of
things, however, did not last. Mrs. Blamire having got over the first shock,
comported herself like what she evidently was, a practiced woman of the
world—would talk to no one but ourselves—and seemed resolved not only

to make friends with her successful rival, but to strike up an intimacy. This
by no means entered into my mother's calculations. As the one advanced the
other receded, and, keeping always within the limits of civility, I never
heard so much easy chat put aside with so many cool and stately
monosyllables in my life.

The most diverting part of this scene, very amusing to a stander-by, was,
that my father, the only real culprit, was the only person who throughout
maintained the appearance and demeanor of the most unconscious
innocence. He complimented Mrs. Blamire on her daughters (two very fine
girls)—inquired after his old friend, the Doctor, who was attending his
patients in a distant town—and laughed and talked over bygone stories with
the one lady, just as if he had not jilted her—and played the kind and
attentive husband to the other, just as if he had never made love to any body
except his own dear wife.

It was one of the strange domestic comedies which are happening around us
every day, if we were but aware of them, and might probably have ended in
a renewal of acquaintance between the two families but for a dispute that
occurred toward the end of the evening between Mrs. Blamire and the
friend in whose house we were staying, which made the lady resolve
against accepting his hospitable invitations, and I half suspect hurried her
off a day or two before her time.

This host of ours was a very celebrated person—no other than William
Cobbett. Sporting, [pg 508] not politics, had brought about our present visit
and subsequent intimacy. We had become acquainted with Mr. Cobbett two
or three years before, at this very house, where we were now dining to meet
Mrs. Blamire. Then my father, a great sportsman, had met him while on a
coursing expedition near Alton—had given him a grayhound that he had
fallen in love with—had invited him to attend another coursing meeting
near our own house in Berkshire—and finally, we were now, in the early
autumn, with all manner of pointers, and setters, and grayhounds, and
spaniels, shooting ponies, and gun-cases, paying the return visit to him.

He had at that time a large house at Botley, with a lawn and gardens
sweeping down to the Bursledon River, which divided his (Mr. Cobbett's)
territories from the beautiful grounds of the old friend where we had been

originally staying, the great squire of the place. His own house—large,
high, massive, red, and square, and perched on a considerable eminence—
always struck me as not being unlike its proprietor. It was filled at that time
almost to overflowing. Lord Cochrane was there, then in the very height of
his warlike fame, and as unlike the common notion of a warrior as could be.
A gentle, quiet, mild young man, was this burner of French fleets and
cutter-out of Spanish vessels, as one should see in a summer day. He lay
about under the trees reading Selden on the Dominion of the Seas, and
letting the children (and children always know with whom they may take
liberties) play all sorts of tricks with him at their pleasure. His ship's
surgeon was also a visitor, and a young midshipman, and sometimes an
elderly lieutenant, and a Newfoundland dog; fine sailor-like creatures all.
Then there was a very learned clergyman, a great friend of Mr. Gifford, of
the “Quarterly,” with his wife and daughter—exceedingly clever persons.
Two literary gentlemen from London and ourselves completed the actual
party; but there was a large fluctuating series of guests for the hour, or
guests for the day, of almost all ranks and descriptions, from the earl and his
countess to the farmer and his dame. The house had room for all, and the
hearts of the owners would have had room for three times the number

I never saw hospitality more genuine, more simple, or more thoroughly
successful in the great end of hospitality, the putting every body completely
at ease. There was not the slightest attempt at finery, or display, or gentility.
They called it a farm-house, and every thing was in accordance with the
largest idea of a great English yeoman of the old time. Every thing was
excellent—every thing abundant—all served with the greatest nicety by
trim waiting damsels; and every thing went on with such quiet regularity
that of the large circle of guests not one could find himself in the way. I
need not say a word more in praise of the good wife, very lately dead, to
whom this admirable order was mainly due. She was a sweet, motherly
woman, realizing our notion of one of Scott's most charming characters,
Ailie Dinmont, in her simplicity, her kindness, and her devotion to her
husband and her children.

At this time William Cobbett was at the height of his political reputation;
but of politics we heard little, and should, I think, have heard nothing, but
for an occasional red-hot patriot, who would introduce the subject, which

our host would fain put aside, and get rid of as speedily as possible. There
was something of Dandie Dinmont about him, with his unfailing good-
humor and good spirits—his heartiness—his love of field sports, and his
liking for a foray. He was a tall, stout man, fair, and sun-burnt, with a bright
smile, and an air compounded of the soldier and the farmer, to which his
habit of wearing an eternal red waistcoat contributed not a little. He was, I
think, the most athletic and vigorous person that I have ever known.
Nothing could tire him. At home in the morning he would begin his active
day by mowing his own lawn, beating his gardener, Robinson, the best
mower, except himself, in the parish, at that fatiguing work.

For early rising, indeed, he had an absolute passion, and some of the poetry
that we trace in his writings, whenever he speaks of scenery or of rural
objects, broke out in his method of training his children into his own
matutinal habits. The boy who was first down stairs was called the lark for
the day, and had, among other indulgences, the pretty privilege of making
his mother's nosegay, and that of any lady visitors. Nor was this the only
trace of poetical feeling that he displayed. Whenever he described a place,
were it only to say where such a covey lay, or such a hare was found sitting,
you could see it, so graphic—so vivid—so true was the picture. He showed
the same taste in the purchase of his beautiful farm at Botley, Fairthorn;
even in the pretty name. To be sure, he did not give the name, but I always
thought that it unconsciously influenced his choice in the purchase. The
beauty of the situation certainly did. The fields lay along the Bursledon
River, and might have been shown to a foreigner as a specimen of the
richest and loveliest English scenery. In the cultivation of his garden, too,
he displayed the same taste. Few persons excelled him in the management
of vegetables, fruit, and flowers. His green Indian corn—his Carolina beans
—his water-melons, could hardly have been exceeded at New York. His
wall-fruit was equally splendid, and much as flowers have been studied
since that day, I never saw a more glowing or a more fragrant autumn
garden than that at Botley, with its pyramids of hollyhocks, and its masses
of china-asters, of cloves, of mignonnette, and of variegated geranium. The
chances of life soon parted us, as, without grave faults on either side, people
do lose sight of one another; but I shall always look back with pleasure and
regret to that visit.

While we were there, a grand display of English games, especially of
single-stick and wrestling, took place under Mr. Cobbett's auspices. [pg
509] Players came from all parts of the country—the south, the west, and
the north—to contend for fame and glory, and also, I believe, for a well-
filled purse; and this exhibition which—quite forgetting the precedent set
by a certain princess, de jure, called Rosalind, and another princess, de
facto, called Celia—she termed barbarous, was the cause of his quarrel with
my mamma that might have been, Mrs. Blamire.

In my life I never saw two people in a greater passion. Each was thoroughly
persuaded of being in the right, either would have gone to the stake upon it,
and of course the longer they argued the more determined became their
conviction. They said all manner of uncivil things; they called each other
very unpretty names; she got very near to saying, “Sir, you're a savage;” he
did say, “Ma'am, you're a fine lady;” they talked, both at once, until they
could talk no longer, and I have always considered it as one of the greatest
pieces of Christian forgiveness that I ever met with, when Mr. Cobbett, after
they had both rather cooled down a little, invited Mrs. Blamire to dine at his
house the next day. She, less charitable, declined the invitation, and we
parted.

As I have said, my father and he had too much of the hearty English
character in common not to be great friends; I myself was somewhat of a
favorite (I think because of my love for poetry, though he always said not),
and I shall never forget the earnestness with which he congratulated us both
on our escape from such a wife and such a mother. “She'd have been the
death of you!” quoth he, and he believed it. Doubtless, she, when we were
gone, spoke quite as ill of him, and believed it also. Nevertheless, excellent
persons were they both; only they had quarreled about the propriety or the
impropriety of a bout at single-stick! Such a thing is anger!

A Reminiscence Of The French Emigration.

In my childhood I knew many of the numerous colony which took refuge in
London from the horrors of the First French Revolution. The lady at whose
school I was educated, and he was so much the more efficient partner that it
was his school rather than hers, had married a Frenchman, who had been
secretary to the Comte de Moustiers, one of the last embassadors, if not the
very last, from Louis Seize to the Court of St. James's. Of course he knew
many emigrants of the highest rank, and indeed of all ranks; and being a
lively, kind-hearted man, with a liberal hand, and a social temper, it was his
delight to assemble as many as he could of his poor countrymen and
countrywomen around his hospitable supper-table.

Something wonderful and admirable it was to see how these dukes and
duchesses, marshals and marquises, chevaliers and bishops, bore up under
their unparalleled reverses! How they laughed and talked, and squabbled,
and flirted, constant to their high heels, their rouge, and their furbelows, to
their old liaisons, their polished sarcasms, their cherished rivalries! They
clung even to their marriages de convenance, and the very habits which
would most have offended our English notions, if we had seen them in their
splendid hôtels of the Faubourg St. Germain, won tolerance and pardon
when mixed up with such unaffected constancy, and such cheerful
resignation.

For the most part these noble exiles had a trifling pecuniary dependency;
some had brought with them jewels enough to sustain them in their simple
lodgings in Knightsbridge or Pentonville, to some a faithful steward
contrived to forward the produce of some estate too small to have been
seized by the early plunderers; to others a rich English friend would claim
the privilege of returning the kindness and hospitality of by-gone years. But
very many lived literally on the produce of their own industry, the
gentlemen teaching languages, music, fencing, dancing, while their wives
and daughters went out as teachers or governesses, or supplied the shops

with those objects of taste in millinery or artificial flowers for which their
country is unrivaled. No one was ashamed of these exertions; no one was
proud of them. So perfect and so honest was the simplicity with which they
entered upon this new course of life, that they did not even seem conscious
of its merit. The hope of better days carried them gayly along, and the
present evil was lost in the sunshiny future.

Here and there, however, the distress was too real, too pressing to be
forgotten; in such cases our good schoolmaster used to contrive all possible
measures to assist and to relieve. One venerable couple I remember well.
They bore one of the highest names of Brittany, and had possessed large
estates, had lost their two sons, and were now in their old age, their
sickness, and their helplessness, almost entirely dependent upon the labor of
Mdlle. Rose, their grand-daughter. Rose—what a name for that pallid,
drooping creature, whose dark eyes looked too large for her face, whose
bones seemed starting through her skin, and whose black hair contrasted
even fearfully with the wan complexion from which every tinge of healthful
color had long flown!

For some time these interesting persons regularly attended our worthy
governess's supper-parties, the objects of universal affection and respect.
Each seemed to come for the sake of the other; Mademoiselle, always
bringing with her some ingenious straw-plaiting to make into the fancy
bonnets which were then in vogue, rarely raised her head from her work, or
allowed herself time to make a hasty meal. It was sad to think how
ceaseless must be the industry by which that fair and fragile creature could
support the helpless couple who were cast upon her duty and her affection!
At last they ceased to appear at the Wednesday parties, and very soon after
(Oh! it is the poor that help the poor!) we heard that the good Abbé Calonne
(brother to the well-known minister) had undertaken for a moderate stipend
the charge of the venerable count and countess, while Mdlle. Rose, [pg 510]
with her straw-plaiting, took up her abode in our school-room, working as
indefatigably through our verbs and over our exercises as she had before
done through the rattle of the tric-trac table and the ceaseless clatter of
French talk.

Now this school of ours was no worse than other schools; indeed it was
reckoned among the best conducted, but some way or other the foul weed
called exclusiveness had sprung up among the half dozen great girls who,
fifty years ago, “gave our little senate laws,” to a point that threatened to
choke and destroy every plant of a more wholesome influence. Doubtless,
long, long ago the world and the world's trials, prosperity with the
weariness and the bitterness it brings, adversity with the joys it takes away,
have tamed those proud hearts! But, at the time of which I speak, no
committee of countesses deciding upon petitions for vouchers for a
subscription ball; no chapter of noble canonesses examining into the sixteen
quarters required for their candidate; could by possibility inquire more
seriously into the nice questions of station, position, and alliance than the
unfledged younglings who constituted our first class. They were merely
gentlemen's daughters, and had no earthly right to give themselves airs; but
I suspect that we may sometimes see in elder gentlewomen the same
disproportion, and that those who might, from birth, fortune, and position
assume such a right, will be the very last to exert their privilege. Luckily for
me I was a little girl, protected by my youth and insignificance from the
danger of a contagion which it requires a good deal of moral courage to
resist. I remember wondering how Mdlle. Rose, with her incessant industry,
her open desire to sell her bonnets, and her shabby cotton gown, would
escape from our censors. Happily she was spared, avowedly because her
birth was noble—perhaps because, with all their vulgar denunciations of
vulgarity, their fineries, and their vanities, the young girls were better than
they knew, and respected in their hearts the very humility which they
denounced.

If, however, there was something about the fair Frenchwoman that held in
awe the spirit of girlish impertinence, chance soon bestowed upon them, in
the shape of a new pupil, an object which called forth all their worst
qualities, without stint and without impediment.

The poor child who was destined to become their victim, was a short, squat
figure, somewhere about nine or ten years of age; awkward in her carriage,
plain in her features, ill-dressed and over-dressed. She happened to arrive at
the same time with the French dancing-master, a marquis of the ancien
régime, of whom I am sorry to say, that he seemed so at home in his

Terpsichorean vocation, that no one could hardly fancy him fit for any
other. (Were not les marquis of the old French comedy very much like
dancing-masters? I am sure Molière thought so.) At the same time with the
French dancing-master did our new fellow-pupil arrive, led into the room
by her father; he did not stay five minutes, but that time was long enough to
strike Monsieur with a horror evinced by a series of shrugs which soon
rendered the dislike reciprocal. I never saw such a contrast between two
men. The Frenchman was slim, and long, and pale; and allowing always for
the dancing-master air, which in my secret soul I thought never could be
allowed for, he might be called elegant. The Englishman was the beau ideal
of a John Bull, portentous in size, broad, and red of visage; loud of tongue,
and heavy in step; he shook the room as he strode, and made the walls echo
when he spoke. I rather liked the man, there was so much character about
him, and in spite of the coarseness, so much that was bold and hearty.
Monsieur shrugged to be sure, but he seemed likely to run away, especially
when the stranger's first words conveyed an injunction to the lady of the
house “to take care that no grinning Frenchman had the ordering of his
Betsy's feet. If she must learn to dance, let her be taught by an honest
Englishman.” After which declaration, kissing the little girl very tenderly,
the astounding papa took his departure.

Poor Betsy! there she sat, the tears trickling down her cheeks, little
comforted by the kind notice of the governess and the English teacher, and
apparently insensible to the silent scorn of her new companions. For my
own part, I entertained toward her much of that pity which results from
recent experience of the same sort of distress—

“A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind.”

I was a little girl myself, abundantly shy and awkward, and I had not
forgotten the heart-tug of leaving home, and the terrible loneliness of the
first day at school. Moreover, I suspected that in one respect, she was much
more an object of compassion than myself; I believed her to be motherless;
so when I thought nobody was looking or listening, I made some girlish
advances toward acquaintanceship, which she was still too shy or too
miserable to return, so that, easily repelled myself, as a bashful child is, our

intercourse came to nothing. With my elders and betters, the cancan, who
ruled the school, Betsy stood if possible lower than ever. They had had the
satisfaction to discover not only that he lived in the Borough, but that her
father (horror of horrors!) was an eminent cheese-factor!—a seller of
Stilton! That he was very rich, and had a brother an alderman, rather made
matters worse. Poor Betsy only escaped being sent to Coventry by the lucky
circumstance of her going that metaphorical journey of her own accord, and
never under any temptation speaking to any body one unnecessary word.

As far as her lessons went she was, from the false indulgence with which
she had been treated, very backward for her age. Our school was, however,
really excellent as a place of instruction: so no studies were forced upon
her, and she was left to get acquainted with the house and its ways, and to
fall into the ranks as she could.

For the present she seemed to have attached [pg 511] herself to Mdlle.
Rose, attracted probably by the sweetness of her countenance, her sadness,
and her silence. Her speech could not have attracted Betsy, for in common
with many of her exiled country-folk, she had not in nearly ten years'
residence in England learned to speak five English words. But something
had won her affection. She had on first being called by the governess, from
the dark corner in which she had ensconced herself, crept to the side of the
young Frenchwoman, had watched her as she wove her straw plaits, had
attempted the simple art with some discarded straws that lay scattered upon
the floor; and when Mademoiselle so far roused herself as to show her the
proper way, and to furnish her with the material, she soon became a most
efficient assistant in this branch of industry.

No intercourse took place between them. Indeed, as I have said, none was
possible, since neither knew a word of the other's language. Betsy was
silence personified; and poor Mdlle. Rose, always pensive and reserved,
was now more than ever dejected and oppressed. An opportunity of
returning to France had opened to her, and was passing away. She herself
was too young to be included in the list of emigrants, and interest had been
made with the French Consul for the re-admission of her venerable parents,
and perhaps for the ultimate recovery of some property still unsold. But her
grandfather was so aged, and her grandmother so sickly, that the expenses

of a voyage and a journey, then very formidable to the old and the infirm,
were beyond her means, beyond even her hopes. So she sighed over her
straw-plaiting, and submitted.

In the mean time the second Saturday arrived, and with it a summons home
to Betsy, who, for the first time gathering courage to address our good
governess, asked “if she might be trusted with the bonnet Mdlle. Rose had
just finished, to show her aunt—she knew she would like to buy that
bonnet, because Mademoiselle had been so good as to let her assist in
plaiting it.” How she came to know that they were for sale nobody could
tell; but our kind governess ordered the bonnet to be put into the carriage,
told her the price—(no extravagant one!)—called her a good child, and took
leave of her till Monday.

Two hours after Betsy and her father re-appeared in the school-room.
“Ma'amselle,” said he, bawling as loud as he could, with the view, as we
afterward conjectured, of making her understand him. “Ma'amselle, I've no
great love for the French, whom I take to be our natural enemies. But you're
a good young woman; you've been kind to my Betsy, and have taught her
how to make your fallals; and moreover you're a good daughter: and so's
my Betsy. She says that she thinks you're fretting, because you can't manage
to take your grandfather and grandmother back to France again;—so as you
let her help you in that other handy-work, why you must let her help you in
this.” Then throwing a heavy purse into her lap, catching his little daughter
up in his arms, and hugging her to the honest breast where she hid her tears
and her blushes, he departed, leaving poor Mdlle. Rose too much
bewildered to speak or to comprehend the happiness that had fallen upon
her, and the whole school the better for the lesson.

The Dream Of The Weary Heart.

The Weary Heart lay restlessly on his bed, distracted with the strife of the
day. Wearied indeed was he in heart, and wavering in the simple faith which
had blessed his childhood. The world was no more beautiful to him, his
fellow-man was no more trustworthy, and heaven was no longer regarded as
his distant, though native home. One thing only seemed, to his changed
heart, the same; it was the ever-varying, ever-constant moon, which shed
her broad, fair light as serenely on his aching brow as when he nestled, a
happy child, upon his mother's breast.

Soothed by this pure light, the Weary Heart slept at length; and in his sleep,
his troubled and toil-worn mind went back—back to the early hours of life
—back to the lone old house, so loved in childhood, so seldom thought of
now. In this old home all seemed yet unchanged, and he would fain have
busied himself in tracing out memories of the past; but a low sweet voice
bade him gaze steadfastly on the lozenge panes of the long lattice window,
where the sun of the early spring-tide was shining gayly through the mazy
branches of the old elm-tree, and bordering its traceries with glimpses of
purple and golden light. But gradually, and even as he looked, the sun
became brighter and hotter, and as his heat momentarily strengthened,
Weary Heart saw the green leaves creep out, one by one, and place
themselves daily between the window and the sun, so as to intercept his
fiercest rays; until at length, when the sun had attained his greatest power,
these leaves were all arranged so as to shade the window, as a bird
overshadows her young; and the room was as much refreshed by the cool
green light, as it had formerly been gladdened by the spring-tide beams.
Then Weary Heart was softened; yet he feared to breathe, lest the dread
winter-time should come, when the cool leaves which brought balm to his
heart, should fall away from him and die.

Gradually, however, the sun became lower in the heavens, and his heat was
less fervid upon the earth. Then the leaves went noiselessly away, in the
same order in which they had come. One by one, they crept silently out of
sight, like earnest hearts whose mission is fulfilled; and yet so glad were
they for the consciousness of the good which they had been given power to
do, that when the Weary Heart observed them more closely, he could see
how bright a glow of joy decked even their dying moments, and in how

frolicsome a dance many of them delighted ere they lay down on the cold
earth to die.

The dark winter had now come on, and anxiously poor Weary Heart
watched the lozenged [pg 512] panes. He saw the branches stand up bare
and desolate against the gray and chilly sky; but soon he saw beautiful
things come and sport upon them. The snow piled itself in fairy ridgeways
along the boughs, and even on the slenderest twigs; then the sun would
shine brightly out for an hour at mid-day, and melt the quiet snow, and the
laughing drops would chase each other along the branches, sometimes
losing all identity, each in the bosom of its fellow—sometimes falling in
glittering showers to the ground. [And he saw that it was from these
glittering showers that the snowdrops sprang]. Then, when the sun was
gone down, the frost would come; and in the morning the silver drops
would be found, spell-bound in their mirth; some hanging in long, clear
pendants, full of bright lights and beautiful thoughts, far above the rest—
and others, shorter and less brilliant, with one part transparent, and another
part looking more like the snow of which they were born. But these last
always hung hand-in-hand. And when the sun came out again by day, these
were always the last to disappear; for they also were like faithful and kindly
hearts. They were partly raised far above their original nature, and yet they
still bore many traces of the source from whence they sprang. And when the
beautiful crystals faded away like the brilliant yet chilly mind, which has no
sympathy or trust for its fellows, the others would still remain, hand-in-
hand, to cheer and deck the naked tree.

Sometimes, too, in the early days of February, the sun would shine fiercely
out ere the green leaves had come to shade the room at noon-day; but then
came a winged messenger to sit on the dry branches, and to tell the Weary
Heart, in a sweet song, that the real spring was not yet upon the earth; but
that at the right time the leaves would most surely reappear, and “fail not.”
And when he had repeated his message, he would add another stanza, and
tell how he needed the shady foliage even more than man himself, but that
he pined not for it, because he knew that to all things there was an appointed
season; and that when his nesting-time came, so would the green leaves
come also to shelter and encircle the frail home of his young ones.

The pale moon went down, and the day broke upon the earth, and Weary
Heart went forth to his daily toil. But he bore not with him the fevered mind
and the throbbing pulse which had been his companions for long and dreary
months. His vision had faded, but the green leaves were ever before his
eyes. The song of his dream-bird rang not in his ears, but his faith and trust
were restored to him; and he once more took his place in creation as an
elevated, yet dependent child of Heaven—one in the mighty brotherhood of
human hearts—one in the band of willing students of the teachings of the
glorious sun and stars, of the opening flowers and the sparkling streams, of
the singing birds and the ever-varying clouds, of every form of beauty in
which God has written his message of love, and of mercy, and of truth, for
man's behoof.

New Discoveries In Ghosts.

Eclipses have been ascribed sometimes to the hunger of a great dragon, who
eats the sun, and leaves us in the dark until the blazing orb has been
mended. Numerous instances are ready to the memory of any one of us, in
illustration of the tendency existing among men to ascribe to supernatural,
fantastic causes, events wonderful only by their rarity. All that we daily see
differs from these things no more than inasmuch as it is at the same time
marvelous and common. We know very well that the moon, seen once by
all, would be regarded as an awful spectre: open only to the occasional
vision of a few men, no doubt she would be scouted by a large party as a
creation of their fancy altogether.

The list of facts that have been scouted in this way, corresponds pretty
exactly to the list of human discoveries, down to the recent improvements
in street-lighting and steam locomotion. The knowledge of the best of us is
but a little light which shines in a great deal of darkness. We are all of us
more ignorant than wise. The proportion of knowledge yet lying beyond the

confines of our explorations, is as a continent against a cabbage garden. Yet
many thousands are contented to believe, that in this little bit of garden lies
our all, and to laugh at every report made to the world by people who have
ventured just to peep over the paling. It is urged against inquiries into
matters yet mysterious—mysterious as all things look under the light of the
first dawn of knowledge—Why should we pry into them, until we know
that we shall be benefited by the information we desire? All information is a
benefit. All knowledge is good. Is it for man to say, “What is the use of
seeing?”

We are in the present day upon the trace of a great many important facts
relating to the imponderable agencies employed in nature. Light, heat, and
electricity are no longer the simple matters, or effects of matter, that they
have aforetime seemed to be. New wonders point to more beyond. In
magnetism, the researches of Faraday and others, are beginning to open in
our own day, the Book of Nature, at a page of the very first importance to
the naturalist; but the contents of which until this time have been wholly
unsuspected. Behind a cloudy mass of fraud and folly, while the clouds
shift, we perceive a few dim stars, to guide us toward the discovery of
wondrous truths. There are such truths which will hereafter illustrate the
connection, in many ways still mysterious, between the body of man and
the surrounding world. Wonderful things have yet to be revealed, on
subjects of a delicate and subtle texture. It behooves us in the present day,
therefore, to learn how we may keep our tempers free from prejudice, and
not discredit statements simply because they are new and strange, nor, on
the other hand, accept them hastily without sufficient proof.

On questionable points, which are decided by research and weight of
evidence, it would be well [pg 513] if it were widely understood that it is by
no means requisite for every man to form an Ay or Nay opinion. Let those
who have no leisure for a fair inquiry play a neutral part. There are
hundreds of subjects which we have never examined, nor ever could or can
examine, upon which we are all, nevertheless, expressing every day
stubborn opinions. We all have to acquire some measure of the philosophic
mind, and be content to retain a large army of thoughts, equipped each
thought with its crooked bayonet, a note of interrogation. In reasoning, also,
when we do reason, we have to remember fairly that “not proven” does not

always mean untrue. And in accepting matters on testimony, we must
rigidly preserve in view the fact, that, except upon gross objects of sense,
very few of us are qualified by training as observers. In drawing delicate
conclusions from the complex and most dimly comprehended operations of
the human frame observed in men and women, the sources of fallacy are
very numerous. To detect and acknowledge these, to get rid of them
experimentally, is very difficult, even to the most candid and enlightened
mind.

I have no faith in ghosts, according to the old sense of the word, and I could
grope with comfort through any amount of dark old rooms, or midnight
aisles, or over church-yards, between sunset and cock-crow. I can face a
spectre. Being at one time troubled with illusions, I have myself crushed a
hobgoblin by sitting on its lap. Nevertheless, I do believe that the great
mass of “ghost stories,” of which the world is full, has not been built
entirely upon the inventions of the ignorant and superstitious. In plain
words, while I, of course, throw aside a million of idle fictions, or
exaggerated facts, I do believe in ghosts—or, rather, spectres—only I do not
believe them to be supernatural.

That, in certain states of the body, many of us in our waking hours picture
as vividly as we habitually do in dreams, and seem to see or hear in fair
reality that which is in our minds, is an old fact, and requires no
confirmation. An ignorant or superstitious man fallen into this state, may
find good reason to tell ghost stories to his neighbors. Disease, and the
debility preceding death, make people on their death-beds very liable to
plays of this kind on their failing faculties; and one solemnity, or cause of
dread, thus being added to another, seems to give the strength of reason to a
superstitious feeling.

Concerning my own experience, which comes under the class of natural
ghost-seeing, above mentioned, I may mention in good faith that, if such
phantoms were worth recalling, I could fill up an hour with the narration of
those spectral sights and sounds which were most prominent among the
illusions of my childhood. Sights and sounds were equally distinct and life-
like. I have run up-stairs obedient to a spectral call. Every successive night
for a fortnight, my childish breath was stilled by the proceedings of a

spectral rat, audible, never visible. It nightly, at the same hour, burst open a
cupboard door, scampered across the floor, and shook the chair by my
bedside. Wide awake and alone in the broad daylight, I have heard the
voices of two nobodies gravely conversing, after the absurd dream fashion,
in my room. Then as for spectral sights: During the cholera of 1832, I, then
a boy, walking in Holborn, saw in the sky, the veritable flaming sword
which I had learned by heart out of a picture in an old folio of “Paradise
Lost.” And round the fiery sword there was a regular oval of blue sky to be
seen through parted clouds. It was a fact not unimportant, that this phantom
sword did not move with my eye, but remained for some time, apparently,
only in one part of the heavens. I looked aside and lost it. When I looked
back there was the image still. There are hallucinations which arise from a
disordered condition of the nervous system; they are the seeing or the
hearing of what is not, and they are not by any means uncommon. Out of
these there must, undoubtedly, arise a large number of well-attested stories
of ghosts, seen by one person only. Such ghosts ought to excite no more
terror than a twinge of rheumatism, or a nervous headache.

There can be no doubt, however, that, in our minds or bodies, there are
powers latent, or nearly latent, in the ordinary healthy man, which, in some
peculiar constitutions, or under the influence of certain agents, or certain
classes of disease, become active, and develop themselves in an
extraordinary way. It is not very uncommon to find people who have
acquired intuitive perception of each other's current thoughts, beyond what
can be ascribed to community of interests, or comprehension of character.

Zschokke, the German writer and teacher, is a peculiarly honorable and
unimpeachable witness. What he affirms, as of his own knowledge, we have
no right to disbelieve. Many of us have read the marvelous account given
by him of his sudden discovery, that he possessed the power in regard to a
few people—by no means in regard to all—of knowing, when he came near
to them, not only their present thoughts, but much of what was in their
memories. The details will be found in his Autobiography, which, being
translated, has become a common book among us. When, for the first time,
while conversing with some person, he acquired a sense of power over the
secrets of that person's past life, he gave, of course, little heed to his
sensation. Afterward, as from time to time the sense recurred, he tested the

accuracy of his impressions, and was alarmed to find that, at certain times,
and in regard to certain persons, the mysterious knowledge was
undoubtedly acquired. Once when a young man at the table with him was
dismissing very flippantly all manner of unexplained phenomena as the
gross food of ignorance and credulity, Zschokke requested to know what he
would say if he, a stranger, by aid of an unexplained power, should be able
to tell him secrets out of his past life. Zschokke was defied to do that; but he
did it. Among other things he described a certain upper room, in which [pg
514] there was a certain strong box, and from which certain moneys, the
property of his master, had been abstracted by that young man; who,
overwhelmed with astonishment, confessed the theft.

Many glimmerings of intuition, which at certain times occur in the
experience of all of us, and seem to be something more than shrewd or
lucky guesses, may be referred to the same power which we find, in the
case just quoted, more perfectly developed. Nothing supernatural, but a
natural gift, imperceptible to us in its familiar, moderate, and healthy
exercise, brought first under our notice when some deranged adjustment of
the mind has suffered it to grow into excess—to be, if we may call it so, a
mental tumor.

We may now come to a new class of mysteries—which are receiving, for
the first time in our own day, a rational solution.

The blind poet, Pfeffel, had engaged, as amanuensis, a young Protestant
clergyman, named Billing. When the blind poet walked abroad, Billing also
acted as his guide. One day, as they were walking in the garden, which was
situated at a distance from the town, Pfeffel observed a trembling of his
guide's arm whenever they passed over a certain spot. He asked the cause of
this, and extracted from his companion the unwilling confession, that over
that spot he was attacked by certain uncontrollable sensations, which he
always felt where human bodies had been buried. At night, he added, over
such spots, he saw uncanny things. “This is great folly,” Pfeffel thought,
“and I will cure him of it.” The poet went, therefore, that very night into the
garden. When they approached the place of dread, Billing perceived a
feeble light, which hovered over it. When they came nearer, he saw the
delicate appearance of a fiery, ghost-like form. He described it as the figure