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A KENTUCKY CARDINAL

AFTERMATH

A Kentucky Cardinal

AND

Aftermath

JAMES LANE ALLEN

Author of_. The Reign of Law," "The Choir Invisible"
" Ihe Blue Grass Region of Kentucky," etc.

TORONTO
THE COPP, CL\RK COMPANY, L,.m,tkd

1 900

Thh c.nthu nn.st „o' hr i,„port.i into Great Britaiu or the UuiteJ StaUs.

h3i

t„te cd aooorH.nr, to A-t of t.,e Parliament of Tanadn, ,„ .ne vo-

onsand „,„e hundred, by Thk CorP. C,,akk Cmp.v.v Limh^d. IWonto
Ontario, n. the Ullice of th. Miuiater of Agriculture

in, in the year one

■':f

A KhNiL'CKY CARDINAL
AKTKRMATH

FAliE

'47

Bflitratt0n

This to her from one who in chii.lhood used to stand

at the windows of her

among the snow-buried cedars.

room and watch for the Cardinal

SlrTtii^

r^'X'r/--''-;ik V /-!-r^/'\ ^^A'-'Miu /cmlir^ ?r.:^^A'o

•iimSk ua':^ "S-^ri'/ V j

2'^f . Jf ^ If ^^:^

CLM of Siiihiticd>lon.b

^='

Apprehensions of Falling Weather

Cuckoo anri Mocking-bird

We twittered kindly at each other

Many an Exquisite Strain

Touches her Guitar with Maidenly Solicitude

A Distant Sharpshooter ....

A False Impression of Mrs. Cobb
Got down my Map of Kentucky
Certain Ladies who bow sweetly to ine
The New Neighbours have come
" Old man, are you the gardener .? " .
I dressed up ... .
Over to my Woodland Pasture

vii

PAGE

4
6
8
13
17
25
27
32
37
42

44
46

Little Town Boys into my Strawberry Bed
Toploftical Struttin/^

I see People on account of my Grapes and Pears
Welcomed her gayly
Knocked reproachfully . , ^
Putting a Prop under a Too-heavily Laden Limb
Thrust Mrs. Cobb out of the House
Wiien she fed her Hens
Tliat Whippin^r
Looking down at the (iate that I made Yesterday
Georgiana and her Mother coming out
" But wouldn't I like to have him !"
"What have you done ? " she cried
A Little Saul of Tarsus .
"And — i —that — all ?"
Set our Candles in our Windows
Sylvia and the Gosling .
Dropped him out into the Street
I tapped it ... _
" Sylvia, my dear child, how old are you
Sylvia performing . . .
He was sitting on the Front Porch
Then we set off at a Brisk Pace
The Three Generals
" I have been married, sir ! " .

viii

PACB
50
67

74
80

S7
89

93
103

"3
121

129

132

'38

143
f44

'59
161

163
166
'78
185
187
189
191

The Carpentt-r and the Sewing-Girl

She could see out of only One Eye

Rosettes of Yellow Ribbon

She sprang across to me .
Then her Kyes caught Siglit .
"What is it, Mrs. Walters ?" .
Tile Sagacious Old Soul .
Specimens of my Notes and Drawincrs
I beheld Cieorgiana as an Old, Old Ladv
Dropped into a Cough

FAGK

'93

'97
'99

20I
204
2o6
2o8

-'3
24 r

3JntroDuction

^HE first thing in life that I can
remember is the hict of being
^^^ caught up into somebody's arms
T^i^"^^^ and of owning a blue tumbler.
Possibly when that gigantic person — who-
ever it was — seized me by my tv\j handles,
I seized my tumbler by its one handle ; and
thus the glass and the caress stayed bound
together in my memory as parts of the same
commotion. But I can never evoke these
ill-assorted beginnings of all conscious recol-
lection without being also obliged to think
of a pump on a slippery hill with a brick
pavement around it: and a pump and a
tumbler and being suddenly snatched off
the earth suggest some true story of the
times. But, then again, it is impossible

to recall the Image of this pump without
instantly dragging into view the head and
shoulders of a smiling school-teacher, who
held me in his arms and who had the power
tc give away sweet morsels — on that occa-
sion ; and why he should appear so early in
the procession of small knowledge — indeed,
at the azoic head of it — may be a secret not
worth discovering, but it is at least quite
certain that no one will ever discover it.

Most likely, these several things, which
are now beheld as compressed into a single
scene and instant, existed far apart through
time and place. A year arrived when caresses
began to be conscious experience ; in another
1 entered upon the ownership of a cerulean
mug ; during a third my explorations of the
physical world extended to the pump in the
yard — for one stood there; on some day
of a fourth I may have been led across the
woods to the school-house on the mud road
— perhaps some Friday afternoon, when it
was customary to have spelling matches, or
dialogues and speeches, and when parents

xii

came and refreshments — the arrival of the
refreshments being much more important
than that of the parents. Be the truth as it
may, the matters set down above are all that
1 can remember on my own account about
my birthplace and my earliest years. Thev
are filaments of the obscurest alg^e, gathered
around the coasts of that dim, deep sea which
is a child's mind and now resembling nothing
so much as a barely traceable bunch of out-
lines pressed on one small card.

After this everything vanishes — tumbler
and teacher, pump and pudding. There is
an upheaval, or a downfall ; and when Mem-
ory begins again the weaving of that long
seamless living tapestry wherefrom she has
never rested and whereon she is busy yet, 1
was about two miles away. My father had
moved with his family to a farm that had
been left to him by his father and entailed
for the benefit of us, his children ; and there
I continued to live until I was twenty-two
years of age, without ever having been out-
side the state of Kentucky or having seen

xiii

more than once or twice any but the nearest
village.

The farm to which the scene now shifts
was small. I was the last of seven children;
and during the forerunning years of his'
married life my father, who was of a most
generous, unselfish, and trustful nature, had
met with reverses ; both his and my mother's
independent fortunes were gone. This piece
of property represented a fragment of his
father's estate, just as his father's estate
represented but a fragment of the wilderness
lands of a pioneer settler. On it stood a
brick house of the Virginia pattern — a very
good one for the time at which it had been
built. In its original shape it consisted of
that part which was two stories high; but
later (I do not know when or by whom)
there had been added at the southern end an
ell containing, besides a pantry and a kitchen,
one chamber, the largest room in the house!
This was occupied by my father and
mother. Thus, in accordance with the com-
mon custom of the country in those days, it

xiv

became the general living-room of the family.
Its two good-sized windows opened upon
the front yard. One of these was kept
closed, because the bed sat against it; the
other was regularly closed at nightfall, and
regularly opened the first thing in the morn-
ing.

In this room, then, and at this window
begins the history of my outdoor life. There
my impressions of the physical world took
earliest shape and meaning; whatsoever un-
important habits of observation I may possess
were there formed, directed, and rewarded;
and if I have ever written anything concern-
ing Nature which shows the slightest knowl-
edge or feeling — if in far later years I have
ever lingered over a page, vainly trying to
put upon it the reality of external things as
they seem to us, and the reality of the emo-
tions they arouse in us — the origin of it all
goes back to that time and place.

Of the other portions of the house, any
account would enter but unprofitably into
the purpose of these recollections. True, I

early acquired excellent information regard-
ing the pantry next door. It was full of
things that once had been in Nature, but
were soon to be in Man. And in Me.
Substances piled up, simply waiting to be
taken in: why keep them waiting? It was
one of the places in which a boy sometimes
lengthens his life and sometimes shortens it,
but where meantime he invariably broadens
his information and his body. The truth, in
any case, would be of no value except as a
warning, and there is never anybody to take
the warning. Of the kitchen also, adjoining
the pantry — those twin hostelnes of little
pattering feet — I have recollections that go
fairly back to Chaos ; but neither have these
anything to do with that one especial end in
view, which further on perhaps may kindly
justify these frank and unexpected personali-
ties. As for the other rooms — the dining-
room, the parlour, the bedrooms upstairs, and
the enormous garret above these — each in
time grew discoverable and definite to my
spreading intelligence until at last I could

XVI

grasp the entire house as a mental whole,
consisting of many orderly and separately
interesting parts. But their several diverse
histories began later ; and none opened for
me an eye through which to look out upon
the physical world.

So that there was but one : the window in
my father's and mother's room, that single
observatory for a delicate child kept much
indoors and having no playmates. At this
instant, as I test the matter in consciousness,
I possess not a single recollection of this
v/indow in summer or of anything I ever
sawfiom it during that season : which means
no doubt that then I was never there. But
from the first chill days of autumn when the
white window-sash was lowered, and doors
were shut, and a fire was kindled on the
hearth — from that time until late spring,
when the sash was thrown up again and
doors were set open and the fireplace was
whitewashed for the summer, with a bag of
straw rammed up the chimney to keep back
soot and swallows — the memories of what I

xvii

looked out upon through that window are so
thick that in all the years since I have never
exhausted them, and I have but to develop
some unused film of memory to find fresh
ones at any moment.

It has been .-.aid that the first thing in the
morning the shutters were thrown open.
How often, as soon as this was done, would
my mother call to me and direct my atten-
tion to something of interest. Perhaps to
the window-panes themselves, silvered and
sparkling with frost. What a wonder and a
myster) to a child's eyes ! Those landscapes
which had settled in a night across his crystal
path of vision and now shut out all others !
Until they were melted away by his hot
breath, or scratched through with a small
curious finger-nail. Sometimes it was as
though the distant woods with all its boughs
and avenues had thrown its image towards
the house— -not across the sunlight, but
under cover of the darkness — and this
image had been intercepted at the window
and fastened there in ice.

XVlll

About thirty yards away stood a row of
b'ge cedar-trees, the well-nigh universal ever-
gteen in Kentucky front yards at that period,
for nurseries were scarce, and a fir, a larch, a
juniper, or the like 'as difficult or impos-
sible to get. How often she called to me,
on going to the window herself, to look out
at these cedars ! At the first snow, piled
lightly on the boughs ; at a male cardinal,
sitting on a pinnacle of white and green ; at
some great sleet, bending them to the earth,
rigid and shapeless. It was she who intro-
duced me to the subject of birds.

Thus, shut up in a rather lonely farm-
house with my back to the fire, I learned to
send my eyes abroad and to live out of doors
with sun and cloud, storm and calm, through-
out three quarters of the year.

These window observations went on dur-
ing many returning seasons. Long before
they had ceased, they were overlapped by
other lines of experience begun outside the
house. First in the yard itself; and has the
mature mind ever been able to describe how

xix

vast a world a large country yard is to a
child ? A summer day there was longer
than is the man's brief life ; one corner of
it more distant from another than continent
from continent to his measuring eyes. In
the yard I could draw near to many things
which I had been obliged to observe from a
distance. I could follow them up, lay hold
on them, play the mischief For one thing :
I could run, at winter twilights, out to the
cedar-trees and seizing a low bough, shake it
and scatter the birds settled down for the
night; thus driving them from tree to tree,
backward and forward, their cries growing
always more distressing in the darkness : a
wonderfully interesting piece of business to
me for some unknown devilish reason. And
then there was the first trap, and the first wild,
fluttering captive after breakfast some morn-
ing. And when the blue grass with orchard
grass mixed in it was at its highest, not yet
having been mowed, and the cold showers of
early June left the tops dripping and bowed
down, out of the depths here and there

issued all day the cries of the young, fallen
troni the nest or unable to rise on callow
wing out of that chill forest of stems. A
fine chance for adventures and a place where
a boy can learn to hate cats — and never
afterwards get over his aversion.

Passing on. I must yet pause to say that
on a Kentucky farm in those days a child
vv'as surrounded by a prodigal bird life of
which but traces remain. My earliest recol-
lections of daybreak are now condensed iiUo
one surviving impression : that of hearing
all round my father's house, beating close to
the walls and surging faintly and more faintly
away in every direction, such a sea of song
as I think can no longer visit human ears.
Of mornings I was often called out of the
house to look at the sky, across which wild
geese were flyinff (I can still hear the cry
of the leaders up there — thaC highest mel-
ody of earth). Or far outnumbering these,
wild ducks; or outnumbering the wild ducks
a myriad to one, the wild pigeons — now
entirely gone. Sometimes the flocks of

XXI

these dappled for hours the low gray sky
over one entire quarter of the heavens :
passing, passing, passing. At other times —
a strangely beautiful sight — flying high on a
clear frosty morning and spread far out in
a thin straight line, they passed under the
zenith like a moving arch. A procession of
arches ! one after another, all borne in the
same direction — a single instinct in ten
thousand breasts. They were visiting still
the vast oak forests of Kentucky. The
whole land lay across the ancient paths of
migration. Strange species now and then
crossed also. I can remember that my father,
who was a capital shot, standing one day in
his stable lot, winged an immense sea fowl
that fluttered far down on a neighbour's estate.
He went for it and brought it home; but not
he nor any one else knew the name of it.

Outside the yard, on every side there lay
for me as a child the wonderful universe
of the farm. I early began to make the
acquaintance of this by sitting on the pom-
mel before my father as he rode over it on

xxii

his gaitfd saddle liorse. Later I began to
ride behind him, thank heavens I where
there was no upward horn-like projection to
be perched on, but where I could straddle
a real soft, tat, living back. There was such
a difference between riding on a pommel and
riding off of it. My father knew the names
of all trees of the land and their varieties ;
and of weed and grass and shrub. He had
his wonderful practical knowledge direct from
his father, as his father had drawn his from
the foregoing pioneer settler ; and thus in
the person of my father I touched in some
small way that marvellous utilitarian wood-
craft possessed by the western frontiersman.
Through my father also came the earliest
knowledge of the fields. I possess no men-
tal picture of him older than that of the sow-
ing of hempseed. He sat on his saddle horse,
whose ears he had tied over with his hand-
kerchief to keep the seed from falling into
them. Backward and forward, backward
and forward, across the soft brown earth he
rode, sowing the hemp. And through him

xxiii

there was brought into my life perhaps the
most wholesome idea and lesson that has ever
entered it, — that of getting down to hard
work ; and that whatsoever work my hand
undertook, to rest not until it was done and
done with thoroughness. Both he and my
mother were of inexorable thoroughness and
particularity in all their lives. I have never
followed their example but with outward
profit and inward peace, nor neglected it
withou*: loss of both of these.

What I have now com.e to and am trying to
say is that everything I was set to do, from the
beginning to the end of all my small labours on
the farm, brought indispensable knowledge;
kept me close to the earth; caused me to
know more of the infinite life of out-of-doors.
I dropped corn, covered it, thinned it (an
abominable business, I thought, working a
boy's body as though he were a pair of sugar
tongs). Sometimes I shucked it in autumn,
threw the fodder over to the stock in winter,

took the corn to the mill in the spring

and took my share of the bread at all seasons.

XX iv

m
■'4

I followed the cradles, and shocked oats and
wheat, and helped haul the oats to the barn,
and the wheat to the stack. And who can
do these things without learning a little about
the natural history of fields ? I cut weeds in
the woodland pasture (what Kentucky boy
of those times but looked bitterly forward
from year to year to the weed-cutting season,
and connected weeds with the original curse
of the earth — regularly adding an original
one unknown to iMoses). I cut weeds along
fences and in stable lots : on the whole I
think 1 knew weeds pretty well. For several
springs I helped to cut the willows for tying
the vines in my father's large vineyard. I
charred the ends of the stakes over which
these vines were to grow, hoed the vines,
thmned out superfluous leaves, gathered the
grapes for the press, racked the wine in the
cellar — and sometimes the wine racked me.
I prepared the ground for the sowing of veg-
etable seeds and cultivated the plants after
they came up : surely I was made to master
the business of gardening. Sometimes when

x.w

a tree was felled in the woods, I collected
the brush into a pile and afterwards burnt
the brush and my breeches. 1 cut wood
for the house at the wood-pile. At the
stable I fed the stock: what is there did
I not learn about a barn and its kind
faithful souls ?

On the whole, though I was never a hard-
worked, hard-pressed boy, there dwelt in the
minds of parents of those days the stalwart,
sturdy idea that when business stops the
devil begins ; and my parents evidently did
not wish him to begin. It appeared to me
that when they did not keep me busy, they
kept me moving: they sent me on errands
to the neighbours — presumably an amuse-
ment for the young. In this way, as I now
know, I began to extend my knowledge of
woods and fields and pathways beyond the
farm. Furthermore, one of my regular occu-
pations (another amusement) was to hunt
the turkeys. But long before I started out
with the idea of finding the turkeys, the
turkeys had started out with the idea of not

xxvi

being found by anybody. Apparently they
refused grasshoppers until they had reached
a place where they had no right to eat them.
What wanderings and searchings they origi-
nated ! And no sooner did they perceive
that they were discovered than thev benan
to run cheerfully home — zealously pushing
each other out of the way — as though they
had never intended to leave it and were onlv
too glad to return. But they did this every
day, and I was not inclined to believe them.
It IS more to the purpose to record how
during these hours of roaming over the
summer and autumn land, 1 received uncon-
scious lessons regarding it through every
busy sense.

And then there were the child's pleasures
of wood and stream and field, during which
more knowledge was gotten through sheer
joy alone — the best way : for as you can-
not buy joy, neither can you buy the truth
that always attends it. Wring out of
the heart of a man the last essence of his
knowledge of a country, and it will be the

xxvii

scenes of boyhood pleasures. Call on hin.i
for his best remembrance of an orchard ; and
it will be something like tliis : an afternoon
in hire autumn when he had climbed the
fence of one, during a long hunt, his tongue
parched and his stomach empty. But not
an apple was to be found : it was too late :
they had all been knocked or gathered. Ah!
there was a splendid one, caught in the fork
of a limb; or kickinir about amongr the
leaves, he found two, one on top of the
other, beside a sprout of blackberry in deep
grass near the edge of the limbs; or, in a
little hollow of the ground, he spied a third
with a bee hole on one side of it ; a wet leaf
stuck to the other and a little white mould
under it.

Through work and errand and pleasure,
then, I was ever learning. As I grew older
other things helped to furrow habits more
deeply. The school to which J was sent lay
across the country ; and morninc; and after-
noon that country must be traversed. The
neighbourhood church lay several miles off in

xwiii

another. When I entered college, through
part of each year I walked back and forth —
several miles, across the country still. So
that by the end of that time and as the end
of it all, 1 had learned some little about
Nature in a neighbourhood.

One fact is not to be overlooked : that 1
should probably have learned less, had the
neighbourhood contained more children. Of
course this neighbourhood contained its ch.il-
dren, otherwise it would not have been one.
But there were some tamilies with whom we
did not exchange visits. I had whole groups
and flocks ot cousii^is, awav off below the
horizon, in t'vo or three directions ; but I saw

them too seldom — to

mv sorrow,

there were much older bovs far ahead of
me and babies everywhere behind me — no
trouble about babies. But at a certain period
there seemed to have been a lull, and during
that lull I was born. So that strictly I had
no adjacent contemporaries. Undoubtedly
this had its effect — this absence of compan-
ionship : it often led me to follow the negroes

xxix

into the fields, where as one result I watched
the hemp through all its changes. Another
result, more important by far for me, was the
dependence it created upon other things for
play, study, interest, activity, curiosity, affec-
tion. So that the other inhabitants of my
world — domestic fowls, dumb brutes, birds,
creatures of the woods — took measurably
from the first the place of the human species.
There has never been reason to regret these
universal childhood friendships : none of
them, has ever been broken : they mean more
the longer they last.

In so far as literature is concerned these
same experiences taught me, and have always
compelled me, to see human life as set in
Nature : finding its explanation in soil and
sky and season : merely one of the wild
growths that spring up on the surface of the
earth amid ten thousand others. ! hold this
to be the only true way in which to write of
Man in fiction, as it is in science. I further
hold it to be true that if a writer is ever to
have that knowledge of a country which

xxx

reappears in his work as local colour, he must
have gotten it in his childhood ; that no one
ever knows Nature anywhere unless he has
known Nature somewhere in his youth ; and
that he who has thus known her in one place
can, at any time, easily know her in any other.
There maybe new terms, phrases, groupings,
and arrangements ; but it is the same Mother-
Speech learned at the knee.

Behind all that I have written lie the land-
scapes of a single neighbourhood. They are
in T/je B/ue Grass Region of Kentucky, in
Flute and Violin ; still more in A Summer in
yl ready, in A Kentucky Cardinal and After-
math ; and in 'The Reign of Law. The
question is often asked, how can a man in a
city write of a country far away that he has
not seen for years. But that country is never
far away and the man looks over into it un-
ceasingly. He has but to lift his eyes to see it
— as clearly as he sees the people in the street.

Such pictures of outdoor life are for any
one a great possession, a divine indestructible
wealth; and it is for the simple sake of try-

XXXI

ing to spread the love of Nature — of
scattering broadcast such wealth — that he
has written down these words with a certain
childish figure so much in evidence: but this
boy was the only one that he had the right
to use as an illustration.

J. L. A.

New York City,
10 October, 1900.

xxxn

LL this Xew-ycar's
Day of 1850 the sun
shone cloudless but
wrought no thaw,
lOven the landscapes
of frost on the win-
dow-panes did not
melt a flower, and the little trees still keep their
silvery boughs arched high above the jewelled
avenues. During the afternoon a lean hare
limped twice across the lawn, and there was not
a creature stirring to chase it. Now the night

B I

is bitter cold, with no sounds outside but the
cracking of the porches as they freeze tighter.

fc-W

'"V>a

'-<J.

-^^

x> ^^

APPREHENSIONS OF FALLING WEATHER.

Even the north wind seems grown too numb to
move. I had determined to convert its coarse,

big noise into something sweet— as may often
be done by a little art with the things of this
life — and so stretched a horse-hair above the
opening between the window sashes; but the
soul of my harp has departed. I hear but
the comfortable roar and snaj) of hickory logs,
at long intervals a deeper breath from the dog
stretched on his side at my feet, and the crickets
under the hearth-stones. They have to thank
me for that nook. One chill afternoon I came
upon a whole company of them on the western
slope of a woodland mound, so lethargic that I
thumped them repeatedly before they could so
much as get their senses. There was a branch
near by, and the smell of mint in the air, so
that had they been young Kentuckians one
might have had a clew to the situation. With
an ear for winter minstrelsy, I brought two
home in a handkerchief, and assigned them
an elegant suite of apartments under a loose
brick.

But the finest music in the room is that which
streams out to the ear of the spirit in many an
exquisite strain from the hanging shelf of books
on the opposite wall. Every volume there is
an instrument which some melodist of the mind
created and set vibrating with music, as a flower

^•**

CUCKOU ANU MOCKING-BIRU.

shakes out its perfume or a star shakes out its
li<;ht. Only listen, and they soothe all care, as
though the silken soft leaves of poppies had
been made vocal and poured into the ear.

Towards dark, having seen to the comfort
of a household of kind, faithful fellow-beings,
whom man in his vanity calls the lower animals,
I went last to walk under the cedars in the
front yard, listening to that music which is at
once so cheery and so sad — the low chirping of
birds at dark winter twilights as they gather in
from the frozen fields, from snow-buried shrub-
bery and hedge-rows, and settle down for the
night in the depths of the evergreens, the only
refuge from their enemies and shelter from the
blast. But this evening they made no ado
about their home-coming. To-day perhaps none
had ventured forth. I am most uneasy when
the red-bird is forced by hunger to leave the
covert of his cedars, since he, on the naked
or white landscapes of winter, offers the most
far-shining and beautiful mark for Death. I
stepped across to the tree in which a pair of
these birds roost, and shook it, to make sure
they were at home, and felt relieved when they
fluttered into the next with the quick startled
notes they utter when aroused.

^.O-

■1
I

WE TWirrEKEJ; KINDLY AT KACH OTHER.

The lonf(er I live here, the better satisfied I
am in having pitched my earthly camp-fire,
gypsylike, on the edge of a town, keeping it on
one side, and the green fields, lanes, and woods
on the other. Each, in turn, is to me as a mag-
net to the needle. At times the needle of my
nature points towards the country. On that
side everything is poetry. I wander over field
and forest, and through me runs a glad current
of feeling that is like a clear brook across the
meadows of May. At others the needle veers
round, and I go to town — to the massed
haunts o*^ the highest animal and cannibal.
That way nearly everything is prose. 1 can
feel the prose rising in nie as I step along,
like hair on tlie back of a dog, long before any
other dogs are in sight. And, indeed, the case
is much that of a country dog come Lo town, so
that growls are in order at every corner. The
only being in the universe at which I have ever
snarled, or with which T have rolled over in the
mud and fought like a common cur, is Man.

Among my neighbours who furnish me much
of the plam prose of life, the nearest hitherto
has been a bachelor named Jacob Mariner. I
called liim my raincrow, because the sound of
his voice awoke apprehensions of failing weather.

MANY AN KXQflSITF, STRAIN.

A visit from him was an endless drizzle. For
Jacob came over to expound his minute symp-
toms ; and had everything that he gave out on
the subject of human ailments been written
down, it must have made a volume as large, as
solemn, and as inconvenient as a family Bible.
My other nearest neighbour lives across the road
— a widow, Mrs. Walters. I call Mrs. Walters
my P^ocking-bird, because she r -produces by
what is truly a divine arrangement of the throat
the voices of the town. When she flutters
across to the yellow settee under the grape-vine
and balances herself lightly with expectation, I
have but to request that she favour me with a
little singing, and as soon the air is vocal with
every note of the village songsters. After this,
Mrs. Walters usually begins to flutter in a moth-
erly way around the subject of wj' s\mptoms.

Naturally, it has been my wish to bring about
between this raincrow and mocking-bird the
desire to pair with one another. For, if a man
always wanted t. tell his symptoms, and a woman
always wished to hear about them, surely a mar-
riage compact on the basis of such a passion
ought to open up for them a union of ever-
flowing and indestructible felicity. They should
associate as perfectly as the compensating

metals of a pendulum, of which the one con-
tracts as the other expands. And then I should
be a little happier myself. lUit the perversity
of life! Jacob would never confide in Mrs.
Walters. Mrs. Walters would never inquire for
Jacob.

Now poor Jacob is dead, of no complaint
apparently, and with so few sym])toms that
even the doctors did not know what was the
matter, and the upshot of this talk is that his
place has been sold, and I am to have new
neighbours Whcit a disturbance to a man
living on the edge of a quiet town !

Tidings of the calamity came to-day from
Mrs. Walters, who flew over and sang — sang
even on a January afternoon — in a manner to
rival her most vociferous vernal execution. But
the poor creature was so truly distressed that I
followed her to the front gate, and we tw'ttered
kindly at each other over the fence, and ruffled
our plumage with common disapproval. It is
marvellous how a member of her sex will con-
ceive dislike of peo])le that she has never seen ;
but birds are sensible of heat or cold long before
either arrives, and it may be that this mocking-
bird feels something wrong at the quill end of
her feathers.

'^^e^/^

A PACF^ CT ilLUr^ DOGS LET LC^E™:-^

^-^^..r)-^-

':^^k <i^^

S. WALTERS this
morning with more
news touching our

incoming neighbours.
Whenever I have
faced towards this
aggregation of unwel-
come individuals, I have beheld it movin^^
towards me as a thick gray mist, shutting out
nature beyond. Perhaps they arc approaching
this part of the earth like a comet that carries
its tail before it, and I am already enveloped in
a disturbing, befogging nebulosity.

There is .still no getting the truth, but it ap-
pears that they are a family of consequence in
their way — which, of cour.se, may be a very
poor way. Mrs. Margaret Cobb, mother, lately
bereaved of her husband, Joseph Cc'nb, who fell

among the Kentucky boys at the battle of Buena
Vista. A son, Joseph Cobb, now cadet at West
Point, with a desire to die like his father, but
destined to die — who knows ? — in a war that
may break out in this country about the negroes.
Then there is a daughter, Miss Georgiana Cobb,
who embroiders blue-and-pink-worsted dogs on
black foot-cushion?, makes far-off crayon trees
that look like sheep in the act of variously get-
ting up and lying down on a hill-side, and, when
the dew is falling and the moon is the shai)c of
the human lips, touches her guitar with maidenly
solicitude. Lastly, a younger daughter, who is
in the half-fledged state of becoming educated.
While not reconciled, I am resigned. The
young man when at home may wish to jiractise
the deadly vocation of an American soldier of
the period over t'- j garden fence at my birds, in
which case he and I could readily fight a duel,
and help maintain an honoured custom of the
commonwealth. The older daughter will sooner
or later turn loose on my heels one of her pack
of blue dogs. If this should befall me in the
spring, and I survive the dog, I could retort with
a dish of strawberries and a copy of " Lalla
Rookh " ; if in the fall, with a basket of grapes
and Thomson's "Seasons," after which there

TOUCHES HER GlITAK WITH MAIPKNI.Y SOI.ICITUOE.

would be no further exchange of hostilities.
The younger daughter, being a school-girl, will
occ."sionally have to be subdued with green
apples and salt. The mother could easily give
trouble ; or she might be one of those few women
to know whom is to know the best that there is
in all this faulty world.

The middle of February. The depths of win-
ter reached. Thoughtful, thoughtless words —
the depths of winter. I^verything gone inward
and downward from surface and summit. Nature
at low tide. In its time will come the height of
summer, when the tides of life will rise to the
tree-tops, or be dashed as silvery insect spray
all but to the clouds. So bleak a season touches
my concern lor birds, which never seem quite
at home in this world; and the winter has been
most lean and hungry for them. Many snows
have fallen — snows that are as raw cotton
spread over their breakfast-table, and cuttino-
off connection between them and its bounties.
Next summer I must let the weeds grow up in
my garden, so that they may have a better
chance for seeds above the stingy level of the
universal white. Of late I have opened a pawn-
broker's shop for my hard-pressed brethren in
feathers, lending at a fearful rate of interest;

for every borrowing Lazarus will have to pay
me back in due time by monthly instalments of
singing. I shall have mine own again with
usury. But were a man never so usurious,
would he not lend a winter seed for a summer
song.? Would he refuse to invest his stale
crumbs in an orchestra of divine instruments
and a choir of heavenly voices.? And to-day,
also, I ordered from a nursery-man more trees
of holly, juniper, and fir, since the storm-beaten
cedars will have to come down. For in Ken-
tucky, when the forest is naked, and every shrub
and hedge-row bare, what would become of our
birds in the universal rigour and exposure of the
world if there were no evergreens — Nature's
hostelries for the homeless ones ? Living in the
dv^pths of these, they can keep snow, ice, and
wind at bay ; prying eyes cannot watch them,
nor enemies so well draw near ; cones or seed or
berries are their store ; and in those untrodden
chambers each can have the sacred company of
his mate. I^ut wintering here has terrible risks
which few run. Scarcely in autumn have the
leaves begun to drop from their high perches
silently downward when the birds begin *:o drop
away from the bare boughs silently southward.
Lo ! some morning the leaves are on the ground,

and the birds have vanished. The species that
remain, or that come to us then, wear the hues
of the season, and melt into the tone of Nature's
background— blues, grays, browns, with touches
of white on tail and breast and wing for coming
flecks of snow.

Save only him — proud, solitary stranger in
our unfriendly land— the fiery grosbeak. Nature
in Kentucky has no wintry harmonies for him.
He could find these only among the tufts of the
October sumac, or in the gum-tree when it
stands a pillar of red twilight fire in the dark
November woods, or in the far depths of the
crimson sunset skies, where, indeed, he seems
to have been nested, and whence to have come
as a messenger of beauty, bearing on his wings
the light of his diviner home.

With almost everything earthly that he touches
this high herald of the trees is in contrast.
Among his kind he is without a peer. Even
when the whole company of summer voyagers
have sailed back to Kentucky, singing and laugh-
ing and kissing one another under the enormous
green umbrella of Nature's leaves, he still is
beyond them all in loveliness. But when they
have been wafted away again to brighter skies
and to soft islands over the sea, and he is left

A DlbTA.M .sIIAKrsm)UTER.

alone on the cd^c of that Northern world which
he has dared invade and inhabit, it is then, amid
black clouds and drifting snows, that the gor-
geous cardinal stands forth in the ideal picture
of his destiny. For it is then that his beauty is
most conspicuous, and that Death, lover of the
peerless, strikes at him from afar. So that he
retires to the twilight solitude of his wild for-
tress. Let him even show his noble head and
breast at a slit in its green window-shades, and
a ray flashes from it to the eye of a cat ; let
him, as spring comes on, burst out in despera-
tion and mount t , the tree-tops which he loves,
and his gleaming red coat betrays him to the
poised hawk as to a distant sharpshooter ; in
the barn near by an owl is waiting to do his
night marketing at various tender-meat stalls ;
and, above all, the eye and heart of man are
his diurnal and nocturnal foe. What wonder
if he is so shy, so rare, so secluded, this flame-
coloured prisoner in dark-green chambers, who
has only to be seen or heard and Death adjusts
an arrow !

No vast Southern swamps or forest of pine
here into which he may plunge. If he shuns
man in Kentucky, he must haunt the long
lonely river valleys where the wild cedars grow.

If he comes into this immediate swarming pas-
toral region, where the people, with ancestral
love of privacy, and not from any kindly
thought of him, plant evergreens around their
country homes, he must live under the very
guns and amid the pitfalls of the enemy.
Surely, could the first male of the species
have foreseen how, through the generations of
his race to come, both their beauty and their
song, which were meant to announce them to
Love, would also announce them to Death, he
must have blanched snow-white with despair
and turned as mute as stone. Is it this flight
from the inescapable just behind that makes
the singing of the red-bird thoughtful and plain-
tive, and, indeed, nearly all the wild sounds of
Nature so like the outcry of the doomed ? He
will sit for a long time silent and motionless in
the heart of a cedar, as if absorbed in the tragic
memories of his race. Then, softly, wearily, he
will call out to you and to the whole world:
Peace . . Peace . . Peace. . Peace . . Peace ! — the
most melodious sigh that ever issued from the
clefts of a dungeon.

For colour and form, brilliant singing, his very
enemies, and the bold nature he has never lost,
I have long been most interested in this bird.

Evciy year several pairs make their appearance
about my placo. This winter especially I have
been feeding; a pair; and there should be fmer
music in the spring;, and a lustier brood in
summer.

Ill

ARCH has gone like its
winds. The other niicht
as I lay awake with
that yearning which
^^ ofteiii beats within,
.O there fell from the
upper air the notes
of the wild gander as he wedged his way on-
ward by faith, not by sight, towards his distant
bourn. I rose and. throwing open the shutters,
strained eyes towards the unseen and unseeing

explorer, startled, as a half-asleep soldier might
be startled by the faint bugle-call of his com-
mander, blown to him from the clouds. What
far-off lands, streaked with mortal dawn, does
he believe in ? In what soft sylvan waters will
he bury his tired breast ? Always when I hear
his voice, often when not, I too desire to be up
and gone out of these earthly marshes where
hunts the dark Fowler, — gone to some vast,
pure, open sea, where, one by one, my scattered
kind, those whom I love and those who love
me, will arrive in safety, there to be together.

March is a month when the needle of my
nature dips towards the country. I am away,
greeting everything as it wakes out of winter
sleep, stretches arms upward and legs down-
ward, and drinks goblet after goblet of young
sunshine. I must find the dark green snowdrop,
and sometimes help to remove from her head,
as she lifts it slowly from her couch, the frosted
nightcap, which the old Nurse would still insist
that she should wear. The pale green tips of
daffodils are a thing of beauty. There is the
sun-struck brook of the field, underneath the
thin ice of which drops form and fall, form and
fall, like big round silvery eyes that grow bigger
and brighter with astonishment that you should

laugh at them as they vanish. But most I love
to see Nature do her spring house-cleaning in
Kentucky, with the rain-clouds for her water-
buckets and the winds for her brooms. What
an amount of drenching and sweeping she can
do in a day ! How she dashes pailful and pail-
ful into every corner, till the whole earth is as
clean as a new floor ! Another day she attacks
the piles of dead leaves, where they have lain
since last October, and scatters them in a trice,
so that every cranny may be sunned and aired.
Or, grasping her long brooms by the handles,
she will go into the woods and beat the icicles
off the big trees as a housewife would brush
down cobwebs; so that the released limbs
straighten up like a man who has gotten out of
debt, and almost say to you, joyfully, " Now,
then, we are all right a:;ain ! " This done, she
begins to hang up soft new curtains at the forest
windows, and to spread over her floor a new car-
pet of an emerald loveliness such as no mortal
looms could ever have woven. And then, at
last, she sends out invitations through the South,
and even to some tropical lands, for the birds to
come and spend the summer in Kentucky. The
invitations are sent out in March, and accepted
in April and May, and by June her house is full
of visitors.

Not the eyes alone love Nature in March.
Every other sense hies abroad. My tongue
hunts for the last morsel of wet snow on the
northern root of some aged oak. As one goes
early to a concert-hall with a passion even for
the preliminary tuning of the musicians, so my
car sits alone in the vast amphitheatre of Nature
and waits for the earliest warble of the blue-
bird, which seems to start up somewhere behind
the heavenlv curtains. And the scent of spring,
is it not the first lyric of the nose — that despised
poet of the senses ?

But this year I have hardly glanced at the
small choice edition of Nature's spring verses.
This by reason of the on-coming Cobbs, at the
mere mention of whom I feel as though I were
plunged up to my eyes in a vat of the prosaic.
Some days ago workmen went into the house
and all but scoured the v(>ry memory of Jacob
off the face of the earth. Then there has been
need to quiet Mrs. Walters.

Mrs. Walters does not get into our best
society ; so that the town is to her like a pond to
a crane : she wades round it, going in as far as
she can, and snatches up such small fry as come
shoreward from the middle. In this way lately
I have gotten hints of what is stirring in the
vasty deeps of village opinion.

1%-?.^

^^■^■^y^-'^-

A. FALSK IMI'RKSSION oK MRS. CoBB.

Mrs. Cobb is charged, among other dreadful
things, with having ordered of the town manu-
facturer a carriage that is to be as fine as Presi-
dent Taylor's and with marching into church
preceded by a servant, who bears hei prayer-
book on a velvet cushion. What if she rode in
Cinderella's coach, or had her prayer-book car-
ried before her on the back of a Green River
turtle.' But to her sex she promises to be an
invidious Christian. I am rather disturbed by
the gossip regarding the elder daughter. But
this is so conflicting that one impression is
made only to be effaced by another.

A week ago their agent wanted to buy my
place. I was so outraged that I got down my
map of Kentucky to see where these peculiar
beings originate. They come from a little town
in the southwestern corner of the State, on the
Ohio River, named Henderson — named from
that Richard Henderson who in the year 1775
bought about half of Kentucky from the Chero-
kees, and afterwards, as president of his pur-
chase, addressed the first legislative assembly
ever held in the West, seated under a big elm
tree outside the walls of Boonsborough fort.
These people must be his heirs, or they would
never have tried to purchase my few Sabine

^'"^^^^

GOT Ul)\VN MV MAI' Ul' KENTl'CKY.
27

acres. It is no surprise to discover that they
arc from the (irccn River country. They
must bathe often in that stream. I sujipose
they wanted my front yard to sow it in jjcnny-
royal, the characteristic growth of those dis-
tricts. They surely distil it and use it as a
l)erfume on their handkerchiefs. It was per-
haps from the founder of this family that
Thomas Jefferson <i;ot authority for his state-
ment that the Ohio is the most beautiful river
in the world — unless, indeed, the President
formed that notion of the Ohio upon lifting
his eyes to it irom the contemplation of Green
River. Henderson! (ireen River region! To
this town and to the blue-grass country as
Ikeotia to Attica in the days of Pericles. Here-
after I shall call these people my Green River
Ji(jeotians.

A few days later their agent again, a little
frigid, very urgent — this time to buy me out
on my own terms, (iz/y terms. But what was
back of all this, I inquired. I did not know
these jjeople, had never done them a favour.
Why, then, such determination to have me re-
moved .? Why such bitterness, vindictiveness,
ungovernable passion ?

That was the point, he replied. This family

Ii ul never wron-cd „n: I luul never even seen
//aw. Vet Ih-y had heard of nothin- but my
intense dislike ot them and (.|)i)()sition to their
becomin- my nei-hbours. They could not fore-
ffo their plans, btit ihey were quite williiif; to
give me the chance of leavin- their vicinity,
on whatever I nii-ht regard the most advanta-
geous terms.

Oh, my mocking-bird, my mocking-bird !
When you have been sitting on other front
porches, have you, l)y the divine law of your
being, been reproducin<; your notes as though
they were mine, and even pouring forth the
little twitter that was meant for your private
ear ?

As March goes out, two things more and
more I hear — the cardinal has begun to mount
to the bare tops of the locust-trees and scatter
his notes downward, and over the wav the work-
men whistle and sing. The bird is'too shy to
sit in any tree on that side of the yard. Hut
his eye and ear are studying them curiously.
Sometimes I even fancy that he sings to them
with a plaintive sort of joy, as though he were
saying, " Welcome — go away ! "

*HE Cobbs will be the death
of me before they get
here. The report spread
that they and I had al-
ready had a tremendous
quarrel, and that, rather
than live beside them, I
had sold them my place.
This set flowing towards me for days a stream
of people, like a line of ants passing to and
from the scene of a terrific false alarm. I had
nothing to do but sit perfectly still and let each
ant, as it ran up, touch me with its antennae,
get the counter-sign, and turn back to the vil-
lage ant-hill. Not all, however. Some remained
to hear me abuse the Cobbs ; or, counting on

my support, fell to abusinj; the Cobbs them-
selves. When I made not a word of reply,
except to assure them that I really had not quar-
relled with the Cobbs, had nothing against the
Cobbs. and was immensely delighted that the
Cobbs were coming, they went away amazingly
cool and indignant. But for days'l continued
to hear such things attributed to me that, had
that young West-Pointer been in the neighbour-
hood, and known how to shoot, he must infallibly
have blown my head off me, as any Kentucky
gentleman would.

Others of my visitors, having heard that I was
not to sell my place, were so glad of it that they
walked around my garden and inquired about
my health and the prospect for fruit. For the
season has come when the highest animal begins
to pay me some attention. During the winter,
having little to contribute to the community, I
drop from communal notice. But there are cer-
tain ladies who bow sweetly to me when mv
roses and honeysuckles burst into bloom ; a fat
old cavalier of the South begins to shake hands
with me when my asparagus bed begins to send
up its tender stalks; I am in high favour with
two or three young ladies at the season of lilies
and sweet-pea; there is one old soul who espe-

^'^:.

CERTAIN LADIES WHO BOW SWEETLY TO ME.

cially loves rhubarb pies, which she makes to look
hkc little latticed porches in front of little ^reen
skies, and it is she who remembers me and my
row of pie-plant; and still another, who knows
better than cat-birds when currants are ripe.
Above all, there is a preacher, who thinks my
sins are as scarlet so long as my strawberries
are, and plants himself in my bed at that time
to reason with mc of Judgment to come; and a
doctor, who gets despondent about my constitu-
tion in pear time — after which my health seems
to return, but never my pears.

So that, on the whole, from May till October
I am the bright side of the moon, and the tele-
scopes of the town are busy ob.serving my phe-
nomena ; after which it is as though I had rolled
over on my dark side, there to lie forgotten till
once more the sun entered the proper side of the
zodiac. But let me except always the few stead-
ily luminous spirits I know, with whom is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning. If any
one wishes to become famous in a community,
let him buy a small farm on the edge of it and
cultivate fruits, berries, and flowers, which he
freely gives away or lets be freely taken.

All this has taken freely of my swift April
days. Besides, I have made mc a new side-
^ 33

porch, made it myself, for I like to hammer and
drive things home, md because the rose on the
old one had rotted it from post to shingle. And
then, when I had tacked the rose in place again,
the little old window opening above it made that
side of my house look like a boy in his Saturday
hat and Sunday breeches. So in went a large
new window ; and now these changes have mys-
teriously offended Mr.s. Walters, who says the
town is laughing at me for trying to outdo the
Cobbs. The highest animal is the only one who
is divinely gifted with such noble discernment.
But I am not sorry to have my place look its
best. When they see it, they will perhaps un-
derstand why I was not to be driven out by a
golden cracker on their family whip. They
could not hrve bought my little woodland pas-
ture, where for a generation has been picnic and
muster and Fourth-of-July ground, and where
the brave fellows met to volunteer for the Mexi-
can war. They could not have bought even the
heap of brush behind my wood-pi'e, where the
brown thrashers build.

W' ^'^^ ■'' X

/ %:

nasj^TJJ^ ?,TAY I am of the earth, earthy.
r^-r^^^^-*.^ The soul loses its wild white
pinions ; the heart puts forth
its short, powerful wings,
heavy with heat and colour,
that flutter, but do not lift it off
the ground. The month comes
and goes, and not once do I
)^ think of raising my eyes to the
.stars. The very sunbeams fall
on th€ body as a warm golden net, and keep
thought and feeling fron. 'escape. Nature uses
beauty now not to iip^lKt, but to entice. I find
her intent upon the one general business of see-
ing that no type of her creatures gets left oit of

the ^generations. Studied in my yard full of
birds, as with a condensing glass of the world,
she can be seen enacting among them the
dramas of history. Yesterday, in the secret
recess of a walnut, I saw the beginning of the
Trojan war. Last week I witnessed the battle
of Actium fought out in mid-air. And down
among my hedges — indeed, openly in my very
barn-yard — there is a perfectly scandalous Salt
Lake Citv.

And while I am watching the birds, they are
watching me. Not a little fop among them,
having proposed and been accepted, but perches
on a limb, and has the air of putting his hands
mannishly under his coat-tails and crying out at
me, " Hello I Adam, what were you made for?"
" You attend to your -Business, and I'll attend to
mine," I answer. "You have one May; I have
twenty-five ! "' He didn't wait to hear. Me
cau.;;ht sight of a jiair of clear brown eyes peep-
ing at him out of a near tuft of leaves, and
sjirang thither with open arms and the sound of
a kiss.

Hut if I have twenty-five Mays remaining, are
not some Mays gone.' Ah, well! Ikttcr a sin-
gle May with the; right mate, than the full num-
ber with the wrong. And where is she — the

:^ ^%^-^,

'X* ^ '^V ' > .

jrgi^j -

THK NKW NKIf:HBnrRS WAVK COME.

right one? If she ever comes near my yard
and answers my whistle, I'll know it; and then
I'll teach these popinjays in blue coats and
white pantaloons what Adam was made for.

But the wrong one — there's the terror !
Only think of so composite a phenomenon as
Mrs. Walters, for in.stance, adorned with limp
nightcap and stiff curl-papers, like garnishes
around a leg of roast mutton, waking up beside
me at four o'clock in the morning as some gray-
headed love-bird of Madagascar, and beginning
to chirp and trill in an ecstasy !

The new neighbours have come — mother,
younger daughter, and servants. The son is at
West Point ; and the other daughter lingers a
few days, unable, no doubt, to tear herself away
from her beloved penny-royal and dearest Green
River. They are cjuiet ; have borrowed nothing
from any one in the neighbourhood; have well-
dressed, well-traineii servants , and one begins
to be a little impressed. The curtains they have
|)ut up at the windows suggest that the whole
nest is being lined with S( it, cool, spotless love-
liness, which is very restful and beguiling.

No one has called yet, >ince they are not at
home till June , but Mrs. Walters has done some
tall wading lately, and declares that people do

3»

not know what to think. They will know when
the elder daughter arrives ; for it is the worst
member of the family that settles what the world
shall think of ':he others.

If only she were not the worst ! If only as I
sat here beside my large new window, around
which the old rose-bush has been trained and
now is blooming, I could look across to her win-
dow where the white curtains hang, and feel that
behind them sat, shy and gentle, the wood-pigeon
for whom through Mays gone by I have been
vaguely waiting !

And yet I do not believe that I could live a
single year with only the sound of cooing in the
house. A wood-pigeon would be the death of
me.

IHIS mornin<;, the 3d of
June, the llndine from
Green River rose above
the waves.

The strawberry bed is
almost under their win-
dows. I had gone out
to pick the first dish of
the season for breakfast;
for while I do not care to eat except to live, I
never miss an opportunity of living upon straw-
berries.

I was stooping down and bending the wet
leaves over, so as not to miss any, when a voice
at the window above said, timidly and playfully,

•' Are you the gardener ? "

I picked on, turning as red as the berries.
Then the voice said again,

" Old man, are you the gardener ? "

Of course a person looking down carelessly on
the stooping figure of any man, and seeing noth-
ing but a faded straw hat, and arms and feet
and ankles bent together, might easily think him
decrepit with age. Some things touch off my
temper. But I answered, humbly,

" I am the gardener, madam."

"How much do you ask for your straw-
berries.?"

"The gentleman who owns this place does
not sell his strawberries. He gives them aw^y.
if he likes people. How much do you ask for
your strawberries } "

" What a nice old gentleman ! Is he having
those picked to give away } "

" He is having these picked for his breakfast."

"Don't you think he'd like you to give me
those, and pick him some more ? "

"I fear not, madam."

" Nevertheless, you might. He'd never know."

"OLU MAN, ARE YOU THK GARDENER?"

"I think he'd find it out."
" You are not afraid of him, are you ? "
" I am when he gets mad."
" Does he treat you badly ? "
" If he does, I always forgive him."
" He doesn't seem to provide you with very
many clothes."
I picked on.

" Rut you seem nicely fed."
I picked on.

" What is his name, old man ? Don't you like
to talk.?"

"Adam Moss."

" Such a green, cool, soft name ! It is hke his
house and yard and garden. What does he do ? "

"Whatever he pleases."

" You must not be impertinent to me, or I'll
tell him. What does he Hke ? "

" Birds— red-birds. What do you like } "

"Red-birds! How does he catch them.?
Throw salt on their tails.?"

" He is a lover of Nature, madam, and partic-
ularly of birds."

"What does /le know about birds.? Doesn't
he care for people .? "

" He doesn't think many worth caring for."
" Indeed ! Ana /le is perfect, then, is he .? "

1 DRESSED UP.

" He thinks he is nearly as bad as any ; but
that doesn't make the rest any better."

"Poor old gentleman! He must have the
bhies dreadfully. What docs he do with his
birds? Eat his robins, and stuff his cats, and
sell his red-birds in cages? "

"He considers it part of his mission in life
to keep them from being eaten or stuffed or
caged."

" And you say he is nearly a hundred ? "
" He is something over thirty years of age,
madam."

" Thirty ? Surely we heard he was very old.
And does he live in that beautiful little old
house all by himself ? "

" / live with him ! "

" r.;/. ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! And what is your
name, you dear good old man ? "

"Adam."

" Two Adams living in the same house !
A- /ou the old Adam ' I have heard so much
'♦ him."

At this I rose, pushed back my hat, and
looked up at her.

" / am Adam Moss," I said, with distant
politeness. " Vou can have these strawberries
for your breakfast if you want them."

OVER TO MY Wi)ont,ANU I'ASTl RE.

There was a low quick "Oh ! " and she was
gone, and the curtains closed over her face. It
was rude; but neither ou<(ht she to have called
me the old Adam. I have been thinkinjr of
one thins: why should she speak sliKhtin-;ly of
my knowledp^e of birds .' What does she know
about them ? I should like to inquire.

Late this afternoon, I dressed up in my hi<;h
gray wool hat. my fine lons-tailod blue' cl.^h
coat with brass buttons, my pink waist-coat,
frilled shirt, white cravat, and yellow nankeen
trou.sers, and walked slowly several times around
my strawberry bed. Did not see any more ripe
strawberries.

Within the last ten days I have called twice
upon the Cobbs, urged no doubt by an extrava-
gant readiness to find them all that I feared
they were not. How exquisite in life is the art
of not seeing many things, and of forgetting
many that have been seen ! They received me
as though nothing unpleasant had happened.
Nor did the elder daughter betray that we had
met. She has not forgotten, for more than
once I surprised a light in her eyes as though
she were laughing. She has not, it is certain,
told even her mother and sister. Somehow this

fact invests her character with i charm as of
subterranean roominess and secrecy. Women
who tell everything are like finger-bowls of
clear water.

But it is Sylvia that pleases me. She must
be about seventeen ; and so demure and confid-
ing that I was ready to take her by the hand,
lead her to the garden-gate, and say : Dear
child, everything in here — butterflies, flowers,
fruit, honey, everything — is yours; come and
go and gather as you like.

Yesterday morning I sent them a large dish
of strawberries, with a note asking whether
they would walk during the day over to my
woodland pasture, where the soldiers had a
barbecue before setting out for the Mexican
war. The nn)ther and Sylvia accepted Our
walk was a little overshadowed by their Ic ss ;
and as I thoughtlessly described the gayety of
that scene — t!.e splendid young fellows danc-
ing in their bright uniforms, and now and then
pausing to wipe their foreheads, the speeches,
the cheering, the dinner under the trees, and,
a few days later, the tear-dimmed eyes, the
hand-wringing ?nd embracing, and at last the
marching proudly away, each with a Bible in
his pocket, ai.d many never, never to return —

I was sorry that I had not foreseen the sacred
chord I was touching. But it made good friends
of us more quickly, and they were well-bred, so
that we returned to all appearance in giy spirits.
The elder daughter came to meet us. and went
at once silently to her mother's side, as though
she had felt the sepr.ration. I wondered whether
she had declined to go because of the memory
of her father. As we passed my front gate,
I asked them to look at my flowers. The
mother praised also the cabbages, thus showing
an admirably balanced mind; the little Sylvia
fell in love with a vine-covered arbour; the elder
daughter appeared to be secretly watching the
many birds about the grounds, but when I pointed
out several less-known species, she lost interest.
What surprises most is that they are so re-
fined and intelligent. It is greatly to be feared
that we Kentuckians in this part of the State
are profoundly ignorant as to the people in
other parts. I told Mrs. Walters this, and
she, seeing that I am beginning to like them,
is beginning to like them herself. Dear Mrs.'
Walters ! Her few ideas are like three or four
marbles on a level floor : they have no power
to move themselves, but roll equally well in any
direction you push them.
E 49

This afternoon I turned a lot of little town
boys into my strawberry bed, and now it looks
like a field that had been harrowed and rolled.

UlTLi; R)\VN )!UYS INTO MY hlRAWBKRRV BED.

I think they would <;ladly have pulled up some
of the plants to see whether there might not be
berries growing on tlie roots.

It is unwise to do everything that you can
for people at once ; for when you can do noth-

ing more, they will say you are no longer like
yourself, and turn against you. So I have
meant to go slowly with the Cobbs in my wish
to be neighbourly, and do not think that they
could reasonably be spoiled on one dish of
strawberries in three weeks. liul the other
evening Mrs. Cobb sent over a plate of golden
sally-lunn on a silver waiter, covered with a
snow-white napkin ; and acting on this provo-
cation. I thought they could be trusted with a
basket of cherries.

So next morning, in order tr save the ripen-
ing fruit on a rather small tree of choice variety.
I thought I should put up a scarecrow, and to
this end rummaged a closet for some last win-
ter's old clothes. These I crammed with straw,
and I fastened the resulting figure in the crotch
of the tree, tying the arms to the adjoining limbs,
and giving it the dreadful appearance of shout-
ing, " Keep out of here, you rascals, or you'll
get hurt!" And. in truth, it did look so like
me that I felt a little uncanny about it myself.

Returning home late, I went at once to the
tree, where I found not a quart of cherries, and
the servants told of an astonishing thing : that
no sooner had the birds discovered who was
standing in the tree, wearing the clothes in

which he usccj to feed them during the winter,
than the news spread Hke wildfire to the effect
that he had climbed up there and was calling
out : " Here is the best tree, fellows ! Pitch in
and help yourselves ! " So that the like of the
chattering and fetching away was never seen
before. This was the story ; but little negroes
love cherries, and it is not incredible that the
American birds were assisted in this instance by
a large family of fat young African spoon bills.
Anxious to save another tree, and afraid to
use more of my own clothes, I went over to
Mrs. Walters, and got from her an old bonnet
and veil, a dress and cape, and a pair of her
cast-off yellow gaiters. These garments I strung
together and prepared to look lifelike as nearly
as a stuffing of hay would meet the inner re-
quirements of the case. T ni seated the dread
apparition in the fork of a limb, and awaited
results. The first thief was an old jay, who
flew towards the tree with his head turned to
one side to see whether any one was overtaking
him. But scarcely had he alighted when he
uttered a scream of horror that was sickening
to hear, and dropped on the grass beneath, after
which he took himself off with a silence and
speed that would have done credit to a passen-

ger-pigeon. That tree was rather avoided for
some days, or it may have been let alone merely
because others were ripening; so that IMrs. Cobb
got her cherries, and I sent Mrs. Walters some
also for the excellent loan of her veil and gaiters.

As the days pass I fall in love with Sylvia,
who has been persuaded to turn mv arbour into
areading-roop.andisoften to be' found there
of mornin-s with one of Sir Walter's novels.
Sometimes I leave her alone, sometimes lie on
the bciich facing her, while she reads aloud, or,
tiring, prattles. Little half-Hedged spirit,' to
whom the yard is the earth and June eternity,
but who peeps over the edge of the nest at the
chivalry of the ages, and fancies iiu-t she knows
the world. The other day, as we were talking,
she tapped the edge of her hanhoc with a slate-
pencil -for she is also studying the Greatest
Common Divisor — and said, warningly, " Vou
must not make epigrams ; for if you succeeded
you would be brilliant, and everything brilliant
is tiresome."

" Who is your authority for that epigram, Miss
Sylvia } " I said, laughing.

" Don't you suppose that I have any ideas
but what I get from books ? "

" You may have all wisdom, but those sayings
proceed only from experience."

" I have my intuitions ; they are better than
experience."

" If you keep on, you will be making epigrams
presently, and then I shall find you tiresome,
and go away."

" You couldn't. I am your guest. Mow un-
conventional I am to come over and sit in your
arbour? But it is Georgiana's fault."

" Did she tell you to con.e ? "

"No; but she didn't keep me from coming.
Whenever any one of us does anything improper
we always say to each other, ' It's Georgiana's
fault. She ought not to have taught us to be so
simple and unconventional. ' "

" And is she the family governess } "

" She governs the family. There doesn't
seem to be any real government, but we all do
as she says. You might think at first that
Georgiana was the most light-headed member
of the family, but she isn't. She's deep. I'm
shallow in comparison with her. She calls me
sophisticated, and introduces me as the elder
Miss Cobb, and says that if I don't stop reading
Scott's novels and learn more arithmetic she
will put white caps on me, and make me walk

to church in carpet slippers and with grand-
mother's stick."

" But you don't seem to have stopped, Miss
Sylvia."

"No; but I'm stopping. Georgiana always
gives us time, but we get right at last. It was
two years before she could make my brother go
to West Point. He was wild and rough, and
wanted to raise tobacco, and float with it down
to New Orleans, and have a good time. Then
when she had gotten him to go she was afraid
he'd come back, and .so she persuaded my
mother to live here, where there isn't any to-
bacco, and where I could be .sent to school.
That took her a year, and now she is breakin'^
up my habit of reading nothing but novels.
She gets us all down in the end. One day when
she and Joe were little children they were out at
the wood-pile, and Georgiana was sitting on a
log eating a jam biscuit, with her feet on the log
in front of her. Joe had a hand-a.xe, and was
chopping at anything till he caught sight of her
feet. Then he went to the end of the log, and
whistled like a steamboat, and began to hack
down in that direction, calling out to her : ' Take
your toes out of the way, Georgiana. I am
coming down the river. The current is up and

I can't stop.' 'My toes were there first,' said
Gcorgiana, and wont on eating her biscuit.
'Take thcrn out of the way, I tell you,' he
shouted as he came nearer, ' or they'll get cut
off.' 'They were there first,' repeated Geor-
giana, and took another delicious nibble. Joe
cut straight along, and went whack ! right into
her five toes. Gcorgiana screamed with all her
might, but she held her foot on the log, till Joe
dropped the hatchet with horror, and caught her
in his arms. 'Gcorgiana, I told you to take
your toes away,' he cried ; 'you are such a little
fool,' and ran with her to the house. But she
always had control over him after that."

To-day I saw Sylvia enter the arbour, and
shortly afterwards I followed with a book.

"When you stop reading novels and begin to
read history, Miss Sylvia, here is the most re-
markable history of Kentucky that was ever
written or ever will be. It is by my father's
old teacher of natural history in Transylvania
University, Professor Rafinesque, who also had
a wonderful botanical garden on this side of the
town ; perhaps the first ever seen in this coun-
try."

"I know all about it," replied Sylvia, resent-

ing this slight upon her erudition. •• Georgiana
has my father's ccpy. and his was presented tu
him by Mr. Audubon."

"Audubon!" I said, with a doubt.
"Never heard of Audubon.?" cried Sylvia,
delighted to show up my ignorance.

"Only of the great Audubon. Miss Sylvia;
thc^jrar, the very ^r^^ff Audubon."

"Well, this was the ^^m//, the very ^m?/
Audubon. He lived in Henderson, and kept a
corn-mill. He and my father were friends, and
he gave my father .some of his early drawin-s
of Kentucky birds. Georgiana has them now,
and that is where she gets her love of birds —
from my father, who got his from the ^reaf, the
very ^r;.^r// Audubon."

" Would Miss Cobb let me see these draw-
ings ? " I asked, eagerly.

" She might; but she prizes them as much as
If they were stray leaves out of the only liible
in the world."

As Sylvia turned inside out this pocket of
her mmd, there had dropped out a key to her
sister's conduct. Now I understood her slight-
ing attitude towards my knowledge of birds
But I shall feel some interest in Miss Cobb
from this time on. I never dreamed that she

could bring me fresh news of that rare spirit
whom I have so wished to see, and for one
week in the woods with whom I would give any
year of my life. Are they possibly the Hen-
derson family to whom Audubon intrusted the
box of his original drawings during his absence
in Philadelphia, and who let a pair of Norway
rats rear a family in it, and cut to pieces nearly
a thousand inhabitants of the air ?

There are two more days of June. Since the
talk with Sylvia I have called twice more upon
the elder Miss Cobb. Upon reflection, it is
misleading to refer to this young lady in terms
so dry, stiff, and denuded ; and I shall drop
into Sylvia's form, and call her simply Geor-
giana. That looks better — Georgiana ! It
sounds well, too — Georgiana !

Georgiana, then, is a rather elusive character,
The more I see of her the less I understand
her. If your nature draws near hers, it retreats.
If you pursue, it flies — a little frightened per-
haps. If then you keep still and look perfectly
safe, she will return, but remain at a fixed dis-
tance, like a bird that will stay in your yard,
but not enter your house. It is hardly shyness,
for she is not shy, but more like some strain of

wild nature in her that refuses to be donicsti-
cated. One's faith is strained to accept Sylvia's
estimate that Ge()r<;iana is deep — she is so
light, so airy, so playful. Sylvia is a de./iure
little dove that has pulled x - itself an owl's
skin, and is much prouder >f its wicked old
feathers than of its innocent heart; but Geor-
giana— what is she? Secretly an owl with
the buoyancy of a hummin^^-bird ? However,
it's nothing to me. She hovers around her
mother and Sylvia with a fondness that is
rather beautiful. I did not mention the subject
of Audubon and her father, for it is never well
to let an elder sister know that a younger one
has been talking about her. I merely gave
her several chances to speak of birds, but she
ignored them. As for me and my love of bird.s,
such trifles are beneath her notice. I don't like
her, and it will not be worth while to call again
soon, though it would be pleasant to see those
drawings.

This morning as I was accidentally passing
under her window I saw her at it and lifted my
hat. She leaned over with her cheek in her
palm, and said, smiling,

" You mustn't spoil Sylvia ! "

" What is my definite offence in that regard ? "

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23 WEST MAIN STREET

WEBSTER, NY. 14580

(716) 872-4503

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" Too much arbour, too many flowers, too much
fine treatment."

"Docs fine treatment ever harm anybody?
Is it not bad treatment that spoils people ? "

" Good treatment m.ay never spoil people who
are old enough to know its rarity and value.
But you say you are a student of nature; have
you not observed that nature never lets the
sugar get to things until they are ripe ,'' Chil-
dren must be kept tart."

" The next time that Miss Sylvia comes over,
then, I am to give her a tremendous scolding
and a big basket of green apples."

" Or, what is worse, suppose you encourage
her to study the Greatest Common Divisor ? I
am trying to get her ready for school in the fall."

" Ts she being educated for a teacher ? "

"You know that Southern ladies never teach."

"Then she will never need the Greatest Com-
mon Divisor. I have known many thousands of
human beings, and none but teachers ever has
the least use for the Greatest Common Divisor."

" But she needs to do things that she dislikes.
We all do."

I smiled at the memory of a self-willed little
bare foot on a log years ago.

" I shall see that my grape arbour does not

further interfere with Miss Sylvia's progress
towards perfection."

" Why didn't you wish us to be your neigh-
bours ? "

" I didn't icnow that you were the right sort
of people."

" Are we the right sort !> "

"The value of my land has almost been
doubled."

" It is a pleasure to know that ^■Qu approve
of us on those grounds. Will the value of our
land rise also, do you think } And why do you
suppose we objected to you as a neighbour.? "

" I cannot imagine."

"The imagination can be cultivated, you
know. Then tell me this : why do Kentuckians
in this part of Kentucky think .so much of them-
selves compared with the rest of the world ? "

" Perhaps it's because they are Virgmians.
There may be vaH is reasons."

"Do the people ever tell what the reasons
are.?"

" I have never heard one."

"And if we stayed here long enough, and
imitated them closely, do you suppose we would
get to feel the same way ? "

" I am sure of it."

" It must be so pleasant to consider Kentucky
the best part of the world, and your part of
Kentucky the best of the State, and your family
the best of all the best families in that best part,
and yourself the best member of your family.
Ought not that to make one perfectly happy ? "
" I have often observed that it seems to do so."
" It is delightful to remember that you ap-
prove of us. And we should feel so glad to be
able to return the compliment. Good-bye! "

Any one would have to admit, however, that
there is no sharpness in Georgiana's pleasantry.
The child-nature in her is so sunny, sportive, so
bent on harmless mischief. She still plays with
life as a kitten with a ball of yarn. Some day
Kitty will fall asleep with the Ball poised in
the cup of one foot. Then, waking, when her
dream is over, she will find that her plaything
has become a rocky, thorny, storm-swept, im-
measurable world, and that she, a woman, stands
holding out towards it her imploring arms, and
asking only for some littlest part in its infinite
destinies.

After the last talk with Georgiana I felt re-
newed desire to see those Audubon drawings.

So yesterday morning I sent over to her some
thmgs written by a Northern man, whom I eall
the young Audubon of the Maine woods His
name is Henry D. Thoreau. and it is, I believe
known only to me down here. Everything that
I can find of his is as pure and cold and lonely
as a wild cedar of the mountain rocks, standin'
far above its smokeless valley and hushed white
river. She returned them to-day, with word
that she would thank me in person, and to-night
I went over in a state of rather senseless eager-
ness.

Her mother and sister had gone out, and she
sat on the dark porch alone. The things of
Thoreau's have interested her, and she asked
me to tell her all I knew of him, which was little
enough. Then of her own accord she began to
speak of her father and Audubon - of the one
with the worship of love, of the other with the
worship of greatness. I felt as though I were
in a moonlit cathedral ; for her voice, the whole
revelation of her nature, made the spot so im-
pressive and so sacred. She scarcely addressed
me; she was communing with them. Nothing
that her father told her regarding Audubon
appears to have been forgotten ; and. brought
nearer than ever before to that lofty, tireless

spirit in its wanderings through the Kentucky
forests, I almost forgot her to whom I was lis-
tening. But in the midst of it she stopped, and
it was again kitten and yarn. I left quite as
abruptly. Upon my soul I believe that Georgi-
ana doesn't think me worth talking to seriously.

= ■» -frm-iK-i^di

K^^^ has dragged like a log
^' across a wet field.

There was the Fourth,
which is always the grandest
occasion of the year with us.
Society has taken up Sylvia
and rejected Georgiana ; and
so with its great gallantry,
and to her boundless delight,
Sylvia was invited to sit with a bevy of girls in
a large furniture wagon covered with flags and
F 65

buntinj^. The girls were to be dressed in white,
carry flowers and flags, and sing "The Star-
Spangled Banner' in the procession, just be-
fce the fire-engine. I wrote a note to Geor-
giana, asking whether it would interfere with
Sylvia's Greatest Common Divisor if I presented
her with a profusion of elej^. nt flowers on that
occasion. Georgiana herself had equipped Syl-
via with a truly exquisite silken flag on a silver
staff; and as Sylvia both sang and waved with
all her might, not only to keep up the Green
River reputation in such matters, but with a
medireval determination to attract a young man
on the fire-engine behind, she quite eclipsed
every other miss in the wagon, and was not
even hoarse when persuaded at last to stop. So
that several of the representatives of the other
States voted afterwards in a special congress
that she was loud, and in no way as nice as
they had fancied, and that they ought never
to recognize her again except in church and
at funerals.

And then the month brought down from West
Point the son of the family, who cut off— or cut
at — Georgiana 's toes, I remember. With him
a sort of cousin, who lives in New York State ;
and after a few days of toploftical strutting

1 iVi 1'^ n'i\l

"^^^TX.-.

TOPLOFTICAL STRUTTING.

around town, and a pusillanimous crack or two
over the back-garden fence at my birds, they
went away again, to the home of this New York
cousin, carrying Gcorgiana with them to spend
the summer.

Nothing has happened since. Only Sylvia
and I have been making hay while the sun
shines — or does not shine, if one chooses to
regard Georgiana's absence in that cloudy
fashion. Sylvia's ordinary armour consists of a
slate-pencil for a spear, a slate for a shield, and
a volume of Sir Walter for a bludgeon. Now
and then I have found her sitting alone in the
arbour with the drooping air of Lucy Ashton
beside the fountain ; and she would be better
pleased if I met her clandestinely there in
cloak and plume with the deadly complexion
of Ravensv/ood.

The other day I caught her toiling at some-
thing, and she admitted being at work on a poem
which would be about half as long as the " Lay
of the Last Minstrel." She read me the open-
ing Unes, after that bland habit of young writ-
ers ; and as nearly as I recollect, they began as
follows :

" I love to see gardens and arbours and plants ;
I love the fine air, but not my fine aunts."
68

When not under the spell of media-val chiv-
airy she prattles needlessly of Geor«,nana. early
life, and their old home in Henderson. Al-
thou^jh I have pointed out to her the gross
impropriety of her conduct, she has persisted
in readin<< me some of Georr^iana's letters
written from the home of that New York cousin,
whose mother they are now visitint;. I didn't
like ///;;/ particulaiV. Sylvia relates that he
was a favourite of ner father's.

The dull month passes to-day. One thin<c I
have secretly wished to loarn : did her brother
cut Georgiana's toes entirely off ?

VIII

')n AUGUST the pale and

^^^ delicate poetry of the

, ^^^T^mr — ^ ) Kentucky land makes

V^ ^^- ~^^^jC itself felt as silence and

el I J repose. Still skies, still

/ J \ -7 woods, still sheets of

forest water, still flocks
and herds, long lanes winding without the sound
of a traveller through fields of the universal
brooding stillness. The sun no longer blaz-
ing, but muffled in a veil of palest blue. No

more black clouds rumbling and rushing up
from the horizon, but a single white one brush-
ing slowly against the zenith like the lost wing
of a swan. Far beneath it the silver-breasted
hawk, using the cloud as his lordly parasol.
The eagerness of spring gone, now all but
incredible as having ever existed; the birds
hushed and hiding; the bee. so nimble once,
fallen asleep over his own cider-press in the
shadow of the golden apple. From the depths
of the woods may come the notes of the cuckoo ;
but they strike the air more and more slowly,'
like the clack, clack, clack of a distant wheel
that is being stopped at the close of harvest.
The whirring wings of the locust let themselves
go in one long wave of sound, passing into si-
lence. All nature is a vast sacred goblet, filling
drop by drop to the brim, and not to be shakem
But the stalks of the later flowers begin to be
stuffed with hurrying bloom lest they be too late ;
and the nighthawk rapidly mounts his stairway
of flight higher and higher, higher and higher,
as though he would rise above the warm white
sea of atmosphere and breathe in cold ether.

Always in August my nature will go its own
way and seek its own peace. I roam solitary,
but never alone, over this rich pastoral land,

crossing farm after farm, and keeping as best I
can out of sight of the labouring or loitering
negroes. T^or the sight of them ruins every
landscape, and I shall never feel myself free
till they are gone. What if they sing .' The
more is the pity that any human being could
be happy enough to sing so long as he was a
slave in any thought or fibre of his nature.

Sometimes it is through the aftermath of fat
wheat-fields, where float like myriad little nets
of silver gauze the webs of the crafty weavers,
and where a whole world of winged small folk
flit from tree-top to tree-top of the low weeds.
They are all mine — these Kentucky wheat-
fields. After the owner has taken from them
his last sheai I come in and gather my harvest
also — one that he did not see, and doubtless
would not begrudge me — the harvest of beauty.
Or I walk beside tufted aromatic hemp-fields,
as along the shores of softly foaming emerald
seas ; or past the rank and file of fields of
Indian-corn, v.hich stand like •^imies that had
gotten ready to march, but been kept waiting
for further orders, until at last the soldiers had
grown tired, as the gayest will, of their yellow
plumes and green ribbons, and let their big
hands fall heavily down at their sides. There

Che white and the purple mornin-.glories han<r
their ]on<j testoons and open to the soft, niicr
ni^ht winds their elfin trumpets.

This year as never before I have felt the
beauty of the world. And with the new bright-
ness in whieh every coninion seene has bt'en
apparelled there h is stirred within me a need
of human companionship unknown in the past.
It is as if Nature had spread out her last loveli-

Vou have before you

ness and said : "See

now all that you can ever -et from me! It is
not enou-h. Realize this in time. I am your
Mother. I.ove me as a child. Kut remember !
such love can be only a little i)art of your life."
Therefore I have spent the montn restless,
on the eve of chan-e, drawn to Nature, driven
from her. In SeptemLvr it will be different,
for then there arc more thin-s to do on my
small farm, and I see i)eople on account of my
grapes and pears. My malady this August has
been an idle mind — so idle that a letter from
Georgiana seems its main event. This was
written from the old home of Audubon on the
Hudson, whither they had gone sight-.seeing.
It must have been to her much like a pilgrim-
age to a shrine. She wrote informally, telling
me about the place and enclosing a sprig of

1 SEE PEUl'LE UN ACCOUNT OF MV UKAi'ES ANi» PEAKS,

cedar from one of the trees in the yard Her
mmd was evidently overflowing on the subject
It was rather pleasant to have the overflow
turned my way. I shall plant the cedar where
It will stay always green.

I saw Georgiana once more before her leav-
ing. The sudden appearance of her brother
and cousin, and the news that she would return
with them for the summer, spurred me up to
make another attempt at those Audubon draw-
ings.

How easy it was to get them ! It is what a
i-ian thmks a woman will be willing to do that
she seldom doe.. But she made a confession.
When she first found that I was a smallish
student of birds, she feared I would not like
Audubon, since men so often sneer at those
who do in a grand way what they can do only
in a poor one. I had another revelation of
Georgiana's more serious nature, which is
always aroused by the memory of her father
There is something beautiful and steadfast in
this girl's soul. In our hemisphere vines climb
round from left to right ; if Georgiana loved
you she would, if bidden, reverse every law of
her nature for you as completely as a vine that
you had caused to twine from right to left.

Sylvia enters school the ist of September,
and Georgiana is to be at home then to see to
that. How surely she drives this family before
her — and with as gentle a touch as that of a
slow south wind upon the clouds.

Those poor first drawings of Audubon ! He
succeeded ; we study his early failings. The
world never studies the failures of those who
do not succeed in the end.

The birds are moulting. If man could only
moult also — his mind once a year its errors,
his heart once a year its useless passions ! How
fine we should all look if every August the old
plumage of our natures would drop out and be
blown away, and fresh quills take the vacant
places ! But we have one set of feathers to
last us through our three-score years and ten —
one set of spotless feathers, which we arc told
to keep spotless through all our lives in a dirty
world. If one gets broken, broken it stays ;
if one gets blackened, nothing will cleanse it.
No doubt we shall all fly home at last, like a
flock of pigeons that were once turned loose
snow-white from the sky, and made to descend
and fight one another and fight everything else
for a poor living amid soot and mire. If then
the hand of the unseen Fancier is stretched

forth to draw us in, how can he possibly
smite any one of us, or cast us away, because
we come back to him black and blue with
bruises, and besmudged and bedraggled past
recognition !

lO-DAY, the 7th of
September, I made a
discovery. The pair
of red - birds that
built in my cedar-
trees last winter got
duly away with the
brood. Several times
during summer ram-
bles I cast my eye
about, but they were not to be seen. Early
this afternoon I struck out across the country
towards a sink-hole in a field two miles away,
some fifty yards in diameter, very deep, and
enclosed by a fence. A series of these cir-
cular basins, at regular intervals apart, runs
across the country over there, suggesting the

remains of ancient earth-works. The bottom
had dropped out of this one, probably commu-
nicating with the many caves that are charac-
teristic of this blue limestone.

Within the fence everything is an impene-
trable thicket of weeds and vines — blackberry,
thistle, ironweed, pokewecd, elder, golden-rod!
As I drew near, I saw two or three birds dive
down, with the shy way they have at this season ;
and when I came to the edge, everything was
quiet. But I threw a stone at a point where
the tangle was deep, and there was a great
fluttering and scattering of the pretenders. And
then occurred more than I had looked for. The
stone had hardly struck the brush when what
looked like a tongue of vermilion flame leaped
forth near by, and, darting across, struck itself
out of sight in the green vines on the opposite
slope. A male and a female cardinal flew up
also, balancing themselves on sprays of the
blackberry, and uttering exxitedly their quick
call-notes. I whistled to the male as I had been
used, and he recognized me by shooting up his
crest, and hopping to nearer twigs with louder
inquiry. All at once, as if an idea had urged
him, he sprang across to the spot where the
first frightened male had disappeared. I could

n.j I'll

•^1

•J W

WELCOMED HER CiAVLY.

still hear him under the vines, and presently he
reappeared and flew up into a locust-tree on the
farther edge of the basin, followed by the other.
What had taken place or took place then I do
not know; but I wished he might be saying:
" My son, that man over there is the one who
was very good to your mother and me last win-
ter, and who owns the tree you were born in.
I have warned you, of course, never to trust
Man ; but I would advise you, when you have
found your sweetheart, to give him a trial, and
take her to his cedar-trees."

If he said anything like this, it certainly
had a terrible effect on the son ; for, having
mounted rapidly to the tree-top, he clove the
blue with his scarlet wings as though he were
flying from death. I lost sight of him over
a corn-field.

One fact pleased me : the father returned to
his partner under the briers, for he is not of the
lower sort who forget the mother when the
children are reared. They hold faithfully to-
gether during the ever more silent, ever more
shadowy autumn days; his warming breast is
close to hers through frozen winter nights ; and
if they both live to see another May she is still
all the world to him, and woe to any brilliant
G 8i

vagabond who should warble a wanton love-song
under her holy windows.

Georgiana returned the last of August. The
next morning she was at her window, looking
across into my yard. I was obliged to pass that
way, and welcomed her gayly, expressing my
thanks for the letter.

" I had to come back, you see," she said, with
calm simplicity. I lingered awkwardly, strip-
ping upward the stalks of some weeds.

" Very tew Kentucky birds are migratory,"
I replied at length, with desperate brilliancy and
an overwhelming grimace.

"I shall go back some time — to stay," she
said, and turned away with a parting faintest
smile.

Is that West Point brother giving trouble .'*
If so, the sooner a war breaks out and he gets
killed, the better. One thing is certain : h for
the next month, fruit and flowers will give Geor-
giana any pleasure, she shall have a good deal
of pleasure. She is so changed ! But why
need I take on about it.-*

They have been cleaning out a drain under
the streets along the Town Fork of Elkhorn,
and several people are down with fever.

EW-YEAR'S night a-ain, and
bitter cold.

When I forced myself
away from my fire before
dark, and ran down to the
stable to see about feed-
ing and bedding the horses

and cows, every beast had its head drawn in
towards its shoulders, and looked at me with
the dismal air of sayinj;, " Who is tempering
the wind now ? " The dogs in thj kennel, with
their noses between their hind-legs, were shiver-
ing under their blankets and straw like a nest
of chilled young birds. The fowls on the roost
were mere white and blue puffs of feathers.
Nature alone has the keeping of her creatures ;
why doesn't she make them comfortable?

After supper old Jack and Dilsy came in, and
standing against the wall with their arms folded,
told me more of what happened after I got
sick. That was about the middle of September,
and it is only two weeks since I became well
enough to go in and out through all sorts of
weather.

It was the middle of September then, my ser-
vants said, and as within a week after taking
the fever I was very ill, a great many people
came out to inquire for me. Some of these,
walking around the garden, declared it was a
pity for such fruit and flowers to be wasted, and
so helped themselves freely every time. The
old doctor, who always fears for my health at
this season, stopped by nearly every day to
repeat how he had warned me, and always

..%

KNOCKED KKI'ROACIIIXLLY.

walked back to his gig in a roundabout way,
which required him to pass a favourite tree ; and
once he was so indignant to find several other
persons gathered there, and mournfully enjoy-
ing the last of the fruit as they predicted I
would never get well, that he came back to the
house — with two pears in each duster pocket
and one in his mouth — and told Jack it was an
outrage. The preacher, likewise, who appears
in the spring-time, one afternoon knocked re-
proachfully at the front door and inquired
whether I was in a condition to be reasoned
with. In his hand he carried a nice little work-
basket, which may have been brought along to
catch his prayers ; but he took it home piled
with grapes.

And then they told me, also, how many a
good and kind soul came with hushed footsteps
and low inquiries, turning away sometimes with
brightened faces, sometimes with rising tears —
often people whom I had done no kindness or
whom I cMd not know ; how others whom I had
quarrelled with or did not like, forgot the poor
puny quarrels and the dislike, and begged to do
for me whatever they could ; how friends went
softly around the garden, caring for a flower,
putting a prop Uuder a too-heavily laden limb,

L/iJ

^^%\

PUTTINC A I'RUP INDKK A T(M )-HK.AVII.V I.ADr.N I.IMH

or climbing on step-ladders to tie sacks around
the finest bunches of grapes, with the hope that
I might be well in time to eat them — touching
nothing themselves, having no heart to eat ;
how dear, dear ones would never leave me day
or night ; how a good doctor wore himself out
with watching, and a good pastor sent up for
me his spotless prayers ; and at last, when I
began to mend, how from far and near there
poured in flowers and jellies and wines, until,
had I been the multitude by the Sea of Galilee,
there must have been baskets to spare. God
bless them ! God bless them all ! And God
forgive us all the blindness, the weakness, and
the cruelty with which we judge each other
when we are in health.

This and more my beloved old negroes told
me a few hours ago, as I sat in deep comfort
and bright health again before my blazing hick-
ories ; and one moment we were in laughter and
the next in tears — as is the strange life we live.
This is a gay household now, and Dilsy cannot
face me without a fleshy earthquake of laughter
that I have become such a high-tempered tiger
about punctual meals.

In particular, my two nearest neighbours were
much at odds as to which had better claim to

^.^ ^

THRUST MRS. COHB OfT OF THK UoLSK.
89

nurse me ; so that one day Mrs. Walters, able
to endure it no longer, thrust Mrs. Cobb out of
the house by the shoulder-blades, locked the door
on her, and then opened the shutters and scolded
her out of the window.

One thing I miss. My servants have never
called the name of Georgiana. The omission is
unnatural, and must be intentional. Of course
I have not asked whether she showed any con-
cern ; but that little spot of silence affects me
as the sight of a tree remaining leafless in the
woods where everything else is turning green.

O-DAY I was standing at

^ r^>----.^-«f- a window, looking out at

S^'y^" 033 the aged row of cedars,

ro-.v/l^. lv.t. now laden with snow,

and thinking of Horace

and Soracte. Suddenly,

beneath a jutting pinnacle

of white boughs which left under themselves
one little spot of green, I s?.w a cardinal hop
out and sit full-breasted towards me. The idea
flashed through my mind that this might be
that shyest, most beautiful fellow whom I had
found in September, and whom I tried to make
out as the son of my last wmter's pensioner.
At least he has never lived in my yard be-
fore ; for when, to test his shyness, I started
to raise the window-sash, at the first noise of
it he was gone. My birds are not so afraid
of me. I must get on better terms with this
stranger.

Mrs. Walters over for a v/hile afterwards. I
told her of my fancy that this bird was one of
last summer's brood, and that he appeared a
trifle larger than any male I had ever seen.
She said of course. Had I not fed the parents
all last winter.? When she fed her hens, did
they not lay bigger eggs ? Did not bigger eggs
contain bigger chicks .? Did not bigger chicks
become bigger hens, again .-• According to Mrs.
Walters, a single winter's feeding of hot corn,
meal, scraps of bacon, and pods of red peppei
will all but bring about a variation of species;
and so if the assumed rate at which I am now
going were kept up a hundred years, my cedar-

<I2

m0 %?^^

trees might be full of a race of red-birds as large
and as fat as geese.

Standing towards sundown at another win-
dow, I saw Gcorgiana sewing at hers, as I have
seen her every day since I got out of bed. Why
should she sew so much ? There is a servant
also ; and they sew, sew, sew, as if eternal sew-
ing were eternal happiness, eternal salvation.
The first day she sprang up, letting her work
roll off her lap, and waved her handkerchief
inside the panes, and smiled with what looked
to me like radiant pleasure that I was well
again. I was weak and began to tremble, and,
going back to the fireside, lay back in my chair
with a beating of the heart that was a warning.
Since then she has recognized me only by a
quiet, kindly smile. Why has no one ever
called her name ? I believe Mrs. Walters
knows. She comes nowadays as if to tell me
something, and goes away with a struggle
that she has not told it. But a secret can
no more stay in the depths of Mrs. Walters's
mind than cork at the bottom of water ; some
day I shall see this mystery riding on the
surface.

■jy-f^

XII

*KS, she knew; while
unco n s c i o u s I
talked of Georgi-
ana, of being in
love with her. Mrs.
Walters added,
sadly, that Georgi-
ana came home in
the fall engaged to
that New York

cousin. Hence the sewing -he was to marry

her in June.

I am not in love with her. It is now four
weeks since hearing this conventional fiction
and every day I have been perfectly able to
repeat: "I am not in love with Georgiana!"

There was one question which I put severely to
Mrs. Walters: Had she told Georgiana of my
foolish talk ? She shook her head violently,
and pressed her lips closely together, suggest-
ing how impossible it would be for the smallest
monosyllable in the language to escape by that
channel; but she kept her eyes wide open, and
the truth issued from them, as smoke in a hol-
low tree, if stopped in at a lower hole, simply
rises and comes out at a higher one. " You
should have shut your eyes also," I said.
" You have told her every word of it, and the
Lord only knows how much more."

This February has let loose its whole pack of
grizzly sky-hounds. Unbroken severe weather.
Health has not returned as rapidly as was
promised, and I have not ventured outside the
yard. But it is a pleasure to chronicle the
beginning of an acquaintanceship between his
proud eminence the young cardinal and myself.
For a long time he would have naught to do
with me, fled as I approached, abandoned the
evergreens altogether and sat on the naked
tree-tops, as much as threatening to quit the
place altogether if I did not leave him in peace.
Surely he is the shyest of his kind, and to my
fancy, the most beautiful ; and therefore Na-

turc seems to have stored him with extra cau-
tion towards his arch-enemy.

But in the old human way I have taken
advantage of his necessities. The north wind
has been my friend against him. I have called
in the aid of sleets and sno.vs, have besieged
him in his white castle behind the iriittcrino-
array of his icicles with threats of starvation.
So one day, dropping like a glowing coal down
among the other birds, he snatched a desperate
hasty meal from the public poor-house table
that I had spread under the trees.

It is the first surrender that decides. Since
then some progress has been made in winning
his confidence, but the struggle going on in his
nature is plain enough still. At times he will
rush away from me in utter terror; at others
he lets me draw a little nearer, without movin^^
from a limb ; and now, after a month of persua-
sion, he begins to discredit the experience which
he has inherited from centuries upon centuries
of ancestors. In all that I have done I have
tried to say to him : " Don't judge me by man-
kind in general. With me you are safe. I
pledge myself to defend you from enemies,
high and low."

This has not escaped the notice of Georgi-
H 97

ana at the window, and more than once she has
Vtt her work drop to watch my patient pro<;ress
and to bestow upon me a rewarding smile. Is
there nearly always sadness in it, or is the
sadness in my eyes ? If Georgiana's brother is
giving her trouble, I'd like to take a hand-axe
to /lis feet. I suppose I shall never know
whether he cut her foot in two. She carries
the left one a little peculiarly ; but so many
women do that.

Sometimes, when the day's work is over and
the servant is gone, Georgiana comes to the
window and looks away towards the sunsets
of winter, her hands clasped behind her back,
her motionless figure in relief against the dark-
ness within, her face white and still. Being in
the shadow of my own room, so that she could
not see me, and knowing that I ought not to do
it, but unable to resist, I have softly taken up
the spy-glass which I use in the study of birds,
and have drawn Georgiana's face nearer to me,
holding it there till she turns away. I have
noted the traces of pain, and once the tears
which she could not keep back and was too
proud to shed. Then I have sat before my
flickering embers, with I know not what all
but ungovernable yearning to be over there in

the shadowy room with her, and, whether she
would or not, to fold my arms around her, and,
drawing her face against mine, whisper : " What
is it, Georgiana ? And why must it be ? "

HE fountains of
the great deep
opened. A new
heaven, a new
earth. Georgi-
ana has broken
her engagement
with her cousin.
Mrs. Cobb let it

lOO

out in the strictest confidence to Mrs. Walters.
Mrs. Walters, with stricter confidence still, has
told me only.

The West-Pointer had been writing for some
months in regard to the wild behaviour of his
cousin. This grew worse, and the crisis came.
Georgiana snapped her thread and put up her
needle. He travelled all the way down here to
implore. I met him at the gate as he left the
house — a fine, straight, manly, handsome young
fellow, his face pale with pain, and his eyes
flashing with anger -and bade him a long, affec-
tionate, inward God-speed as he hurned away.
It was her father's influence. He had always
wished for this union. Ah, the evils that come
to the living from the wrongful wishes of the
dead ! Georgiana is so happy now, since she
has been forced to free herself, that spring in
this part of the United States seems to have
advanced about half a month.

" What on earth will she do with all those
clothes.?" inquired Mns. Waitci., the other
night, eyeing me with curious imprcssiveness.

•' Let them be hanged," I said, promptly.

There is a young .scapegrace who passes my
house morning and evening with his cows. He
has the predatory instincts of that being who

lOI

loves to call himself the image of his Maker,
and more than once has given annoyance, espe-
cially last year, when he robbed a damson-tree
of a brood of Baltimore orioles. This winter
and spring his friendly interest in my birds has
increased, and several times I have caught him
skulking among the pines. Last night what
should I stumble on but a trap, baited and
sprung, under the cedar-tree in which the car-
dinal roosts. I was up before daybreak this
mornmg. Awhile after the waking of the birds
here comes my young bird-thief, creeping rap-
idly to his trap. As he stooped I had him by
the collar, and within the next five minutes I
must have set up in his nervous system a nega-
tive disposition to the caging of red-birds that
will descend as a positive tendency to all the
generations of his offspring.

All day this meditated outrage has kept my
blood up. Think of this beautiful cardinal beat-
ing his hea;t out against maddening bars, or
caged for lif,* 'a some dark city street, lonely,
sick, and silent, ndden to sing joyously of that
high world of light and liberty where once he
sported ! Think of the exquisite refinement of
cruelty in wishing to take him on the eve of
May!

102

7'HV' '' '•

.\it

THAT VlIU'l'lNi;,

Jvfi*'>«-*'*^

103

It is hardly a fancy that something as loyal as
friendship has sprung up between this bird and
me. I accept his original shyness as a mark of
his finer instincts ; but, like the nobler natures,
when once he found it possible to give his confi-
dence, how frankly and fearlessly has it been
given. The other day, brilliant, warm, windless,
I was tramping across the fields a mile from
home, when I heard him on the summit of a dead
sycamore, cleaving the air with stroke after stroke
of his long melodious whistle, as with the swing
of a silken lash. When I drew near he dropped
down from bough to bough till he reached the
lowest, a few feet from where I stood, and
showed by every movenient how glad he was
to see me. We really have reached the under-
standing that the immemorial persecution of his
race by mine is ended ; and now more than ever
my fondness settles about him, since I have
found his happiness plotted against, and have
perhaps saved his very life. It would be easy
to trap him. His eye should be made to distrust
every well-arranged pile of sticks under which
lurks a morsel.

To-night I called upon Georgiana and sketched
the arrested tragedy of the morning. She
watched me curiously, and then dashed into a

104

little treatise on the celebrated friendships of man
for the lower creatures, in fact and fiction, from
camels down to white mice. Her father must
have been a remarkably learned man. I didn't
like this. It made me somehow feel as though
I were one of yEsop's Fables, or were being
translated into English as that old school-room
horror of Androclus and the Lion. In the bot-
tom of my soul I don't believe that Georgiana
cares for birds, or knows the difference between
a blackbird and a crow. I am going to ■ -nd her
a little story, "The Passion of the Desert."
Mrs. Walters is now confident that Georgiana
regrets having broken off her engagement. But
then Mrs. Walters can be a great fool when she
puts her whole mind to it.

105

XIV

'^I (^N APRIL I commence to
' scratch and dig in my gar-
den.

To-day as I was raking off

my strawberry bed, Georgi-

ana, whom I have not seen

since the night when she satirized

me, called from the window :

" What are you going to plant
this year ? "

" Oh, a little of everything," I answered,
under my hat. " What are j'ou going to plant
this year ? "

" Are you going to have many strawber-
ries .? "

" It's too soon to tell : they haven't bloomed

io6

yet. It's too soon to tell when they do bloom.
Sometimes strawberries are like women : Whole
beds full of showy blossoms; but when the
time comes to be ripe and luscious, you can't
find them."

" Indeed."

" Tis true, 'tis pity."

" I ^ad always supposed that to a Southern
gentleman woman was not a berry, but a rose.
What does he hunt for in woman as much as
bloom and fragrance ? But I do not belong to
the rose-order of Southern women myself. Syl-
via does. Why did you send mc that story } "

"Didn't you like it.?"

"No. A woman couldn't care for a story
about a man and a tigress. Either she would
feel that she was too much left out, or suspect
that she was too much put in. The same sort
of story about a lion and a woman — that would
be better."

I raked in silence for a minute, and when I
looked up Georgiana was gone. I remember
her saying once that children should be kept
tart ; but now and then I fan^y that she would
like to keep even a middle-aged man in brine.
Who knows but that in the end I shall sell my
place to the Cobbs and move away.

107

Five more days of April, and then May! For
the last half of this light-and-shadow month,
when the clouds, like schools of changeable
lovely creatures, seem to be playing and rush-
ing away through the waters of the sun, life to
me has narrowed more and more to the red-bird,
who gets tamer and tamer with habit, and to
Georgiana, who gets wilder and wilder with
happiness. The bird fills the yard with brilliant
singing ; she fills her room with her low, clear
songs, hidden behind the window-curtains, which
are now so much oftener and so needlessly
closed. I work myself nearly to death in my
garden, but she does not open them. The other
day the red-bird sat in a tree near by, and his
notes floated out on the air like scarlet streamers.
Georgiana was singing, so low that I was mak-
ing no noise with my rake in order to hear ; and
when he began, before I realized what I was
doing, I had seized a brickbat and hurled it,
barely missing him, and driving him away. He
did not know what to make of it ; neither did I ;
but as I raised my eyes I saw that Georgiana
had opened the curtains to listen to him, and
was closing them with her eyes on my face,
and a look on hers that has haunted me ever
since.

io8

April the 26th. It's of no use. To-morrow
night I will go to sec Gcorgiana, and ask her to
marry me.

April 28th. Man that is born of woman is of
few days and full of trouble. I am not the least
sick, but I am not feeling at all well. So have
made a will, and left everything to Mrs. Walters.
She has been over five times to-day, and this
evening sat by me a long time, holding my hand
and smoothing my forehead, and urging me to
try a cream poultice — a mustard-plaster — a
bowl of gruel — a broiled chicken.

I believe Gcorgiana thinks I'll ask her again.
Not if I lived by her through eternity ! Thy
r( <d and Thy staff — t/iej' comfort me.

109

'•"*•' ^57

POOR devil will ask
a woman to marry
him. She will refuse
him. The day after
she will meet him as
serenely as if he had
asked her for a pin.

It is now May
15th, and I have not

spoken to Gcor<,aana when I've had a chance.
She has been entirely too happy, to judge from
her singing, for me to get along with under
tlie circumstances. But this morning, as I was
planting a hedge inside my fence under her
window, she leaned over and said, as though
nothing were wrong between us, " What are you
planting ? "

I have sometimes thought that Georgiana can
ask more questions than Socrates.

" A hedge."

"What for.?"

" To grow."

" What do you want it to grow for > "

" My garden is too public. I wish to be pro-
tected from outsiders."

"Would it be the same thing if I were to
nail up this window.!* That would be so much
quicker. It will be ten years before your hedge
is high enough to keep me from seeing you.
And even then, you know, I could move up-
stairs. But I am so sorry to be an outsider."

"I merely remarked that I was planting a
hedge."

When Georgiana spoke again her voice was
lowered : " Would you open a gateway for me
into your garden, to be always mine, so that I

III

might go out and come in, and never another
human soul enter it ? "

Now Jacob had often begged me to cut him
a private gateway on that side of the garden, so
that only he might come in and go out; and I
had refused, since I did not wish him to get to
me so easily with his complaints. Besides, a
gate once opened, who may not use it ? and I
was indignant that Georgiana should lightly
ask anything at my hands; therefore I looked
quickly and sternly up at her and said, " I will
not."

Af'^'^rwards the thought rushed over mc that
she ' not spoken of any gatewa)' through
my garden fence, but of another one, mystical,
hidden, infinitely more sacred. For her voice
descended almost in a whisper, and her face, as
she bent down towards me, had on it I know
not what angelic expression. She seemed float-
ing to me from heaven.

May 17. To-day I put a little private gate
through my fence under Georgiana's window,
as a sign to her. Balaam's beast that I am !
Yes, seven times more than the inspired ass.

As I passed to-day, I noticed Georgiana look-
ing down at the gate that I made yesterday. She

112

<^^'^ §

LOOKING DOWN AT THE GATE THAT I MADE YESTERDAY.

113

mmm^

held a flower to her nose and eyes, but behind
the leaves I detected that she was laughing.

" Good-morning ! " she called to me. " What
did you cut that ugly hole in your fence for .'' "

" That's not an ugly hole. That's a little
private gateway."

" But what's the little private gateway /t>r.?"

" Oh, well ! You don't understand these mat-
ters. I 11 tell your mother."

" My mother is too old. She no longer stoops
to such things. Tell mc ! "

" Impossible ! "

" I'm dying to know."

" What will you give me ? "

" Anything — this flower ! "

" But what would the flower stand for in that
case } A little pri — "

'• Nothing. Take it ! " and she dropped it
lightly on my face and disappeared. As I stood
twirling it ecstatically under my nose, and won-
dering how I could get her to come back to the
window, the edge of a curtain was lifted, and
a white hand stole out and softly closed the
shuttr-rs.

In the evening Sylvia went in to a concert of
the school, which was to be held at the Court-
house, a chorus of girls being impanelled in the

114

jury-box, and the principal, who wears a little
wig, taking her seat on the woolsack. I prom-
ised to have the very pick of the garden ready,
and told Sylvia to come to the arbour the last
thing before starting. She wore big blue ro-
settes in her hair, and at that twilight hour looked
as lovely, soft, and pure as moonshine ; so that
I lost control of myself and kis.sed her twice —
once for Georgiana and once for myself. Surely
it must have been Sylvia's first experience. I
hope so. Yet she passed througn it with the
composure of a graduate of several years' stand-
ing. But, then, women inherit a great stock of
fortitude from their mothers in this regard, and
perpetually add to it by their own dispositions.
Ought I to warn Georgiana — good heavens! in
a general way, of course — that Sylvia should be
kept away from sugar, and well under the influ-
ence of vulgar fractions ?

It made me feel uncomfortable to sec her go
tripping out of her front gate on the arm of a
youth. Can it be possible that /w would try to
do what / did ? Men differ so in their virtues,
and are so alike in their transgressions. Tl is
forward gosling displayed white duck pantaloons
brandished pumps on his feet, which looked flat
enough to have been webbed, and was scented

115

as to his marital locks with a far-reaching pesti-
lence of bergamot and cinnamon.

After they were gone I strolled back to my
arbour and sat down amid the ruins of Sylvia's
flowers. The night was mystically beautiful.
The moon seemed to me to be softly stealing
down the sky to kiss Endymion. I looked
across towards Georgiana's window. She was
there, and I slipped over and stood under it.

"Georgiana," I whispered, "were you, too,
looking at the moon ? "

" Part of the time," she said, sourly. "Isn't
it permitted ? "

" Sylvia left her scissors in the arbour, and I

can't find them."

"She'll find them to-morrow."
" If they get wet, you know, they'll rust."
"I keep something to take rust off."
"Georgiana, I've got something to tell you

about Sylvia."

" What ? That you kissed her ? "
" N — o ! Not //lat, exactly ! "
" Good-night ! "

May 2 1 St. Again I asked Georgiana to be
mine. J am a perfect fool about her. But she's
coming my way at last — God bless her !

ii6

May 24th. I renewed my suit to Georgiana.

May 27th. I besought Georgiana to hear me.

May 28th. For the last time I offered my
hand in marriage to the elder Miss Cobb. Now
I am done with her forever. I am no fool.

May 29th. Oh. damn Mrs. Walters.

117

«p

XVI

HIS morning, the 3d of
June, I went out to pick
the first dish of straw-
berries for my break-
fast. As I was stooping
down I heard a timid,
playful voice at the
window like the echo
of a year ago : " Are
you the gardener ? "
Since Georgiana will not marry me, if she
v/ould only let me alone !

" Old man, are you the gardener ? "

118

"Yes, I'm the gardener. I know what you
are."

"How much do you ask for your straw-
berries ? "

" They come high. Nothing of mine is to be
as cheap hereafter as it has been."

" I am so glad — for your sake. I should
like to possess something of yours but I suppose
everything is too high now."

" Entirely too high ! "

"If I only could have foreseen that there
would be an increase of value ! As for me, I
have felt that I am getting cheaper lately. I
may have to ^n'e myself away soon. If I only
knew of some one who loved the lower ani-
mals."

" The fox, for instance .■' "

" Yes ; do you know of any one who would
accept the present of a fo.x ? "

" Ahem ! I wouldn't mind having a tatne iox.
I don't care much for wild foxes."

"Oh, this one would get tame — in time."

" I don't believe I know of any one just at
present."

"Very well. Sylvia will get the highest mark
in arithmetic. And Joe is distinguishing him-
self at West Point. That's what I wanted to

119

tell you. I'll send over the cream and sugar,
and hope you will enjoy all your berries.
We shall buy some in the market-house next
week."

Later in the forenoon I sent the strawberries
over to Georgiana. I have a variety that is
the shape of the human heart, and when ripe
it matches in colour that brighter current of the
heart through which runs the hidden history of
our passions. All over the top of the dish I
carefully laid these heart-shaped berries, and
under the biggest one, at the very top, I slipped
this little note : " Look at the shape of them,
Georgiana ! I send them all to you. They are
perishable."

This afternoon Georgiana sent back the
empty dish, and inside the napkin was this
note : " They are exactly the shape and colour
of my emery needle-bag. I have been polish-
ing my needles in it for many years."

Later, as I was walking co town, I met
Georgiana and her mother coming out. No
explanation had ever been made to the mother
of that goose of a gate in our division fence ;
and as Georgiana had declined to accept the
sign, I determined to show her that the gate
could now stand for something else. So I said :

120

J' ■^'"^'

'■•mid

GEORGIANA AND HER MOTHER COMING Ol^r.

121

" Mrs. Cobb, when you send your servants
over for green corn, you can let them come
through that little gate. It will be more con-
venient."

Only, I was so angry and confused that I
called her Mrs. Corn, and said that when she
sent her little Cobbs over . . . etc., etc.

After Georgiana's last treatment of me I
resolved not to let her talk to me out of her
window. So about nine o'clock this morning
I took a negro boy and set him to picking the
berries, while I stood by, directing him in a
deep, manly voice as to the best way of man-
aging that intricate business. Presently I heard
Georgiana begin to sing to herself behind the
curtains.

" Hurry up and fill that cup," I said to him,
savagely. " And that will do this morning.
You can go to the mill. The meal's nearly
out."

When he was gone I called, in an undertone :
"Georgiana! Come to the window! Please!
Oh, Georgiana ! "

But the song went on. What was the matter.?
I could not endure it. There was one way by
which perhaps she could be brought. I whis-

122

tied long and loud again and again. The cur-
tains parted a little space.

" I was merely whistling to the bird," I said.

" I knew it," she answered, looking as I had
never seen her. " Whenever you speak to him
your voice is full of confidence and of love. I
believe in it and like to hear it."

"What do you mean, Georgiana .' " I cried,
imploringly.

"Ah, Adam!" she said, with a rush of feel-
ing. It was the first time she had ever called
me by name. She bent her face down. Over
it there pas.sed a look of sweetness and sadness
indescribably blended. " Ah, Adam ! you have
asked me many times to ma)'}y you ! Make me
believe once that you love me ! Make me feel
that I could trust myself to you for life ! "

"What else can I do.'" I answered, stirred
to the deepest that was in me, throwing my
arms backward, and standing with an open
breast into which she might gaze.

And she did search my eyes and face in
silence.

"What more.?" I cried again, "in God's
name ? "

She rested her face on her palm, looking
thoughtfully across the yard. Over there the

123

red-bird was singing. Suddenly she leaned
down towards me. Love was on her face
now. Hut her eyes held mine with determi-
nation to wrest from them the last truth they
might contain, and her voice trembled with
doubt :

" Would you put the red-bird in a cage for
me } Would you be willing to do that for me,
Adam .? "

At those whimsical, cruel words I shall never
be able to reveal all that I felt — the surprise,
the sorrow, the pain. Scenes of boyhood flashed
through my memory. A conscience built up
through years of experience stood close by me
with admonition. I saw the love on her face,
the hope with which she hung upon my reply,
as though it would decide everything between
us. I did not hesitate ; my hands dropped to
my side, the warmth died out of my heart as
out of spent ashes, and I answered her, with
cold reproach :

" I— will— not!"

The colour died out of her face also. Her
eyes still rested on mine, but now with pitying
sadness

" I feared it," she murmured, audibly, but to
herself, and the curtains fell together.

124

Four days have passed. Gcorgiana has cast
me off. Mcr curtains arc closed except when
she is not there. I have tried to see her ; she
excuses herself. I have written ; my letters
come back unread. I have lain in wait for her
on the streets ; she will not talk with me. The
tic between us has been severed. With her it
could never have been affection.

And for what > I ask myself over and over
and over and over — for what ? Was she jeal-
ous of the bird, and did she require that I
should put it out of the way.? Sometimes
women do that. Did she take that means of
forcing me to a test.' Women do that. Did
she wish to show her power over me, demanding
the one thing she knew would be the hardest for
mc to grant ? Women do that. Did she crave
the pleasure of seeing me do wrong to humour
her caprice.? Women do that. Hut not one
of these things can I even associate with the
thought of Georgiana. I have sought in every
way to have her explain, to explain myself.
She will neither give nor receive an explanation.

I had supposed that her unnatural request
would have been the end of my love, but it has
not; that her treatment since would have fatally
stung my pride, but it has not. I understand

125

neither ; forgive both ; love her now with that
added pain which comes from a man's discover-
ing that the woman dearest to him must be par-
doned — pardoned as long as he shall live.

Never since have I been able to look at the
red-bird with the old gladness. He is the re-
minder of my loss. Reminder.^ Do I ever for-
get.' Am I not thinking of that before his notes
lash my memory at dawn } All day can they
do more than furrow deeper the channel of un-
forgctfulness ? Little does he dream what my
friendship for him has cost me. But this solace
I have at heart — that I was not even tempted
to betray him.

Three days more have passed. No sign yet
that Georgiana will relent soon or ever. Each
day the strain becomes harder to bear. My
mind has dwelt upon my last meeting with her,
until the truth about it wavers upon my memory
like vague, uncertain shadows. She doubted
my love for her. What proof was it she de-
manded .-• I must stop looking at the red-bird,
lying here and there under the trees, and listen-
ing to him as he sings above me. My eyes
devour him whenever he crosses my path with
an uncomprehended fascination that is pain.

126

How gentle he has become, and how, without
intending it, I have deepened the perils of his
life by the very gentleness that I have brough:
upon him. Twice already the fate of his species
has struck at him, but I have pledged myself to
be his friend. This is his happiest season ; a
few days now, and he will hear the call of his
young in the nest.

I shut myself in my workshop in the yard
this morning. I did not wish my servants to
know. In there I made a bird-trap such as I
had often used when a boy. And late this after-
noon I went to tovv-n and bought a bird-cage. I
was afraid the merchant would misjudge me,
and explained. He scanned my face silently.
To-morrow I will snare the red-bird down behind
the pines long enough to impress on his mem-
ory a life-long susj)icion of every such artifice,
and then I will set him free again in his wide
world of light. Above all things, I must see to
it that he does not wound himself or have the
least feather broken.

It is far past midnight now, and I have not
slept or wished for slumber.

Constantly since darkness came on I have
been watching Georgiana's window for the light

^^7

of her candle, but there has been no kindly
f^limmer yet. The only radiance shed upon the
gloom outside comes from the heavens. Great
cage-shaped white clouds are swung up to the
firmament, and within these pale, gentle, im-
prisoned iightniui^s flutter feebly to escape,
fall back, rise, and try aj.',ain and again, and
fail.

... A little after dark this evening I carried
the red-bird over to Georgiana. . . .

I have seen her so little of late that I did not
know she had been away from home for days.
But she was expected to-night, or, at furthest,
to-morrow mornip.g. I loft the bird with the ser-
vant at the door, who (ould hardly believe what
he saw. As I j)asscd out of niy front gate on my
way there, the boy who returns about that time
from the pasture for his cows joined me as I
hurried along, attracted by the fluttering of the
bird in the cage.

" Is it the red-biid .'' / tried to catch him
once," he said, with entire forgiveness of me, as
having served him right, "but I caught some-
thing else. I'll never forget that whipping.
Oh, but wouldn't I like to have him! Mr. Moss,
you wouldn't mind my trying to catch one of
those little bits o' brown fellows, would you, that

128

J y

'BUT wouldn't 1 i.lKt lO HAVE HIM!"

129

hop around under the pine-trees ? They aren't
any account to anybody. Oh my ! but wouldn't
I like to have him ! May I bring my trap some
time, and will you help me to catch one o' those
little bits o' brown ones ? You can't beat vie
catching them ' "

Several times to-night I have gor^ -oss and
listened under Gcorgiana's window. The ser-
vant must have set the cage in her room, for,
as I listened, I am sure I heard the red-bird
beating his head and breast against the wires.
A while ago I went again, and did not hoar
him. I waited a long time. . . . lie may be
quieted. . . .

Ah, if any one had said to me that I would
ever do what I have done, with what full, deep
joy could I have throttled the lie in his throat !
I put the trap under one of the trees where I
have been used to feed him. When it fell he
was not greatly frightened. He clutched the
side of it, and looked out at me. IVIy own mind
supplied his words : "Help! rmciuight! Take
me out ! You promised I " When I transferred
him to the cage, for a moment his confidence
lasted still. He mounted the perch, shook his
plumage, and spoke out bravely and cheerily.
Then all at once came on the terror.

130

The dawn came on this morning with its old
splendour. The birds in my yard, as of old,
poured forth their songs. But those loud, long,'
clear, melodious, deep-hearted, passionate, best-
loved notes ! As the chorus swelled from shad-
owy shrubs rnd vines to the sparkling tree-tops
I listened for some sound from Georgiana's room,
but over there I saw only the soft, slow flapping
of the white curtains like signals of distress.

Towards ten o'clock, wandering restless, I
snatched up a book which I had no wish to read,
and went to the arbour where I had so often
discoursed to Sylvia about children's cruelty to
birds. Through the fluttering leaves the sun-
light dripped as a weightless shower of gold,
and the long pendants of young fruit swayed
gently in their cool wa.xen greenness. Where
some rotting planks crossed the top of the
arbour a blue-jay sat on her coarse nest ; and
presently the mate flew to her with a worm, and
then talked to her in a low voice, as much as
saying that they must now leave the place for-
ever. I was thinking how love softens even the
voice of this file-throated screamer, when along
the garden walk came the rustle of a woman's
clothes, and, springing up, I stood face to face
with Georgian a.

f3i

'§^^^p

/ ■

"WHAT IIAVK YOU DONE?" bllK CRIED.

132

" What have you done ? " she implored.

"What have you done?" I answered as
quickly.

" Oh, Adam, Atiani ! You have killed it !
How could you } How could you } "

"... Is he dead, Georgiana > Is he dead ? . . ."

I forgot everything else, and pulling my hat
down over my eyes, turned from her in the
helpless shock of silence that came with those
irreparable words.

Then, in ungovernable anger, suffering, re-
morse, I turned ui)on her where she sat : " It is
you who killed him ! Why do you come here to
blame me ? And now you pretend to be sorry.
You felt no pity when pity would have done
some good. Tritler ! Hypocrite ! "

" It is false ! " she cried, her words flashing
from her whole countenance, her form drawn up
to repel the shock of the blow.

" Did you not ask for him ? "

"No!"

"Oh, deny it all! It is a falsehood — in-
vented by me on the spot. You know nothing
of it! You did not ask me to do this! And
when I have yielded, you have not run to re-
proach me here and to cry, ' How could you .?
How could you ? ' "

133

" No ! No ! Every word of it — "

" Untruth added to it all ! Oh, that I should
have been so deceived, blinded, taken in ! "

''Adam!"

'* Lovely innocence ! It is too much ! Go
away ! "

" I will not stand this any longer ! " she cried.
" I will go away ; but not till I have told you
why I have acted as I have."

" It is too late for that ! I do not care to
hear ! "

" Then you i'/A?// hear ! " she replied. "You
shall know that it is because I have believed
you capable of speaking to me as you have just
spoken : believed you at heart unsparing and
unjust. You think I asked you to do what you
have done .-' No ! I asked you whether you
would be willing to do it ; and when you said
you would not, I saw then — by your voice,
your eyes, your whole face and manner — that
you would. Saw it as plainly at that moment,
in spite of your denial, as I see it now — the
cruelty in you, the unfaithfulness, the willing-
ness to betray. It v-^s for this reason — not
because I heard you refuse, but because I saw
you consent — that I could not forgive you."

She paused abruptly and looked across into

134

my face. What she may now have read in it I
do not know. Then anger swept her on :

" How often had I not heard you bitter and
contemptuous towards people because they are
treacherous, cruel! How often have you talked
of your love of nature, of our inhumanity towards
lower creatures ! But what have you done ?

" You set your fancy upon one of these crea-
tures, lie in wait for it, beset it with kindness,
persevere in overcoming its wildness. You are
amused, delighted, proud of your success. One
day — you remember.? — it sang as you had
always wished to hear it. It annoyed you, and
you threw a stone at it. With a little less angry
aim you would have killed it. I have never
seen anything more inhuman. How do I know
that some day you would not be tired of rr;.',
and throw a stone at me f When a woman sub-
mits to this once, she will have them thrown at
her whenever she sings at the wrong time, and
she will never know when the right time is.

" Then you thought you were asked to sacri-
fice it, and now you have done that. How do
I know that some day you might not be tempted
to sacrifice me ? " She paused, her voice break-
ing, and remained silent, as if unable to get
beyond that thought,

135

•' If you have finished," I said, very quietly,
" I have something to say to you, and we need
not meet after this.

" I trapped the bird ; you trapped me. I
understood you to ask something of me, t^o cast
me off when I refused it. Such was my faith
in you that beneath your words I did not look
for a snare. How hard it was for me to forgive
you what you asked is my own affair now ; but
forgive you I did. How hard it was to grant
it that also is now, and will always be, my own
secret. I beg you merely to believe this : know-
ing it to be all that you have described — and
far more than you can ever understand — still,
I did it. Had you demanded of me something
worse, I should have granted that. If you think
a man will not do wrong for a woman, you are
mistaken. If you think men always love the
wrong that they do for the women whom they
love, you are mistaken again.

" You have held up my faults to me. I knew
them before. I have not loved them. Do not
think that I am trying to make a virtue out of
anything I say ; but in all my thoughts of you
there has been no fault of yours that I have not
hidden from my sight, and have not resolved as

136

best I could never to see. Yet do not dream
that I have found you faultless.

" You fear I mi^^ht sacrifice you to something
else. It is possible. Every man resists temp-
tation only to a certain point; every man has
his price. It is a risk you will run with any.

"If you doubt that a n.:.n is capable of sacri-
ficing one thing that he loves to another that he
loves more, tomjit him, lie in wait for his weak-
ness, ensnare him in the toils of his greater
passion, and learn the truth.

" I make no defence — believe all that you
say. But had you loved me, I might have been
all this, and it would have been nothinir "

With this I walked slowly out of the arbour,
but Georgiana stood beside me. Her light
touch was on my arm.

" Let me see things clearly! "

"You have a lifetime in which to sec things
clearly," I answered. " How can that concern
me now ? " And I passed on into the house.

During the morning I wandered restless. For
a while I lay on the grass down behind the pines.
How deep and clear are the covered springs of
memory ! All at once it was a morning in my
boyhood on my father's farm. I, a little Saul

'37

A I.llTLE SAUL OF TARJ^US.

138

of Tarsus among the birds, was on my way to

the hcdge-rowis and woods, as to Damascus,
breathing out threatcnings and slaughter. Then
suddenly the childish miracle, which no doubt
had been preparing silently within my nature,
wrought itself out ; for from the distant forest
trees, from the old orchard, from thicket and
fence, from the wide green meadows, and down
out of the depths of the blue sky itself, a vast
chorus of innocent creatures sang to my newly
opened ears the same words: "Why perse-
cutest thou me ? " One sang it with indigna-
tion ; another with remonstrance; still another
with resignation ; others yet with ethereal sad-
ness or wild elusive pain. Once more the
house-wren met me at the rotting gate-post,
and cried aloud, "■ pty-se-cu-ttst — pcr-sc-cu-tcst —
pfy-sc-cn-test — per-sc-cu-test ! " And as I peeped
into the brush-pile, again the brown thrush,
building within, said, " t/wu — t/u>u — //u^n ! "

Through all the years since I had thought
my.self changed, and craved no greater glory
than to be accounted the chief of their apostles.
But now I was stained once more with the old
guilt, and once more I could hear the birds in
my yard singing that old, old chorus against
man's inhumanity.

139

Towards the middle ot the afternoon I went
away across the country — by any direction ; I
cared not what. On my way back I passed
through a large rear lot belonging to my neigh-
bour, and adjoining my own, in which is my
stable. There has lately l)een inijiorted into
this j)art of Kentucky from luigland the much-
prized breed of the beautiful white Berkshire.
As I crossed the lot, near the milk-trough, ash-
heap, and parings of fruit and vegetables thrown
from my neighbour's kitchen, I saw a litter of
these pigs having their awkward sjiort over
some strange red plaything, which one after
another of them would shake with all its might,
root and tear at, or tread into greater shapeless-
ness. It was all there was left of him. If I
could have been spared the sight of that !

I entered my long yard. The sun was set-
ting. Around me was the last peace and
beauty of the world. Through a narrow ave-
nue of trees I could see my house, and on its
clustering vines fell the angry red of the sun
darting across the cool green fields.

The last hour of light touches the birds as
it touches us When they sing in the morning,
it is with the happiness of the earth ; but as
the shadows fall strangely about them, end the

140

helplessness of the nipjht comes on, their voices
seem to be lifted vip like the loftiest jioetry of
the human spirit, with sympathy for reaUties
and mysteries past all understanding;.

A great choir was hymning now. On the
tops of the sweet old honeysuckles the cat-birds ;
robins in the low boughs of maples ; on the high
limb of the elm the silvery-throated lark, who
had stopped as he jxissed from meadow to
meadow ; on a fence rail of the distant wheat-
field the quail — and many another. I walked
to and fro, receiving the voice of each as a
spear hurled at my body. The sun sank. The
shadows rushed on and deepened. Suddenly,
as I turned once more in my path, I caught
sight of the figure of Georgiana moving straight
towards me from the direction of the garden.
She was bare-headed, dressed in white ; and she
advanced over the smooth lawn, through ever-
greens and shrubs, with a gentle grace and dig-
nity of movement such as I had never beheld.
I kept my weary pace, and when she came up I
did not lift my eyes.

"Adam ! " she said, with gentle reproach. I
stood still then, but with my face turned away,

" F'orgivc me ! " All girlishness was gone out
of her voice. It was the woman at last.

141

I turned my face t"'\rthcr from her, and we
stood in silence.

" I have suffered enou<:;h, Adam," she pleaded.

I answered quietly, d()j;i;edly, for there was
nothinj; le;> in me to ajipeal to :

" I am <;lad we can ;)art kindly. . . . Neither
of us may care much for the kindness now, hut
we will not he sorry hereafter. . . . The cjuar-
rels, the mistakes, the rif^jht and the wrong of
our lives, the misunderstandincjs — they are so
stran.i;e, so pitiful, so full of pain, and come so
soon to nothin.t;." And I lifted my hat, and
took tiie path towards my house.

There was a point ahead where it divided,
the other branch leadinj; towards the little pri-
vate j;ate through which Georgiana had come.
Just before reaching the porch I looked that way,
with the idea that I should see Georgiana's
white figure moving across the lawn ; but I
discovered that she was following me. Mount-
in*^ my door-steps, I turned. She had paused
on the threshold. I waited. At length she
said, in a voice low and sorrowful :

" Arc you not going to forgive me, Adam .' "
" I do forgive you ! " The silence fell and
lasted. I no longer saw her face. At last her
despairing voice barely reached me again:

142

'ANU — IS— IHAI —ALL ?'

« And — is — ///«/ — all ? "
I had no answer to make, and sternly waited
for her to go.

SKT OIR CANDLES IN OUR WINDOWS.

A moment longer she lingered, then turned
slowly away ; and I watched her figure growing
fainter and fainter till it was lost. I sprang
after her, my voice rang out hollow, and broke
with terror and pain and longing :

144

" Georgiana ! Georgiana ! "

"Oh, Adam, Adam!'' I heard her cry, with
low, piercing tenderness, as she ran back to me
through the darkness.

When we separated we lighted fresh candles
and set them in our windows, to burn a pure
pathway of flame across the intervening void.
Henceforth we are like poor little foolish chil-
dren, sick and lonesome in the night without one
another. Happy, happy night to come when
one short candle will do for us both !

Ah, but the long, long silence of the

trees ! .

145

AFTERMATH

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, WAS happily at work this morning
among my butterbcans — a vegetable of solid
merit and of far greater suitableness to my
palate than such bovine watery growths as the
squash and the beet. Georgiana came to her
garden window and stood watching me.

" You work those butterbeans as though you
loved //itffi," she said, scornfully.
" I do love them. I love all vines."
" Are you cultivating them as vines or as
vegetables ? "

" It makes no difference to Nature."
" Do you expect me to be a vine when we
are married ?"

" I hope you'll not turn out a mere vegeta-

149

blc. Mow should you like to be a Virf;inia-
creeper ? "

" And what would you be ? "

" What would you like ? A sort of honey-
suckle frame ? "

" Anything ! Only support nic and give me
room to bloom."

I do not always reply to Georgiana, 'though
I always could if I chose. Whenever I re-
main silent about anything she changes the
subject.

" Did you know that Sylvia once wrote a
poem on a vegetable .'' "

" I did not."

"You don't speak as though you cared."

" You must know how deeply interested I
am.

" Then why don't you ask to see the poem ^ "

" What was it on ? — butterbeans ? "

" Sylvia has better taste."

" I suppose I'd better look into this poem."

" You are not to laugh at it."

" I shall weep."

" Promise."

" What am I to promise ? "

"That you will read it without laughing."

"I do promise — solemnly, cheerfully."

»S0

" Come and ^et it."

I went over and stood under the window.
Georgiana soon returned and drojipcd down to
me a piece of writing-paper.

" Sylvia wrote it before she began to think
about boys."

" It must be a very early poem of hers ! "

" It is; and this is the only copy ; don't lose
it."

" Then I think you ought to take it back at
once. Let me beg of you not to risk it — "
Hut she was gone ; and I turned t(; my arbour
and sat down to read Sylvia's j)oem, whii h I
found to be inscribed to " The Potato," and to
run as follows :

" What on thi.s wide earth

That is made or does by nature grow
Is more homely yet more beautiful
Than the useful Potato .-'

" What would this world full of people do,
Kich and poor, hijjh and low,
Were it not for thi.s little-thought-of
But very neces.sury Potato ?

" True, 'tis homely to look on,

Nothing pretty even in its blow,
But it will i)ear acquaintance,
This useful Potato.

" For when it is cooked and oijened
It's so white and mellow,
You forget it ever was homely,
This useful Potato.

" On the whole it is a very plain plant,
Makes no conspicuous show,
But tlie internal appearance i-' lovely
Of the unostentatious Potato.

" On the land or on the sea,
Wherever we may go.
We are always glad to welcome
The sound Potato." »

In the afternoon I was cutting stakes at the
wood-pile for my buttcrbeans, and a bright idea
struck me. During my engagement to Georgi-
ana I cannot always be darting in and out of
Mrs. Cobb's front door like a swallow through
a barn. Neither can I talk freely to Georgiana
— with her up at the window and me down on
the ground — when I wish to breathe into her
ear the things that I mu.st utter or die. Besides,
the sewing-girl whom Georgiana has engaged
is nearly always there. So that as I was in the

^ The elder Miss Cobb was wrong in thinking this poem
Sylvia's. It was extant at the time over the signature of
another writer, whose authorship is not known to have been
questioned. Miss Sylvia perhaps adopted and adapted it out of
admiration, or as a model for her own use. J. L. A.

act of trimming? . lonj? slender stick, it occurred
to me that I mij;ht make use ot this to elevate
any little notes that I might wish to write.

I was greatly taken with the thought, and,
dropping my hand-axe, hurried into the house
and wrote a note to her at once, which I there-
upon tied to the end of the pole by a short
string. Hut as I started for the garden this
r»rangement looked t(0 much like catching
Georgiana with a bait. Therefore, happening
to remember, I stopped at my tool-house, where
I keep a little of everything, and took from a
peg a fine old specimen of a goldfinch's nest.
This I fastened to the end of the pole, and hid-
ing my note in it, now felt better satisfied. No
one but Georgiana herself would ever be able
to tell what it was that 1 might wish to lift up
to her at any time ; and in case of its beiiig not
a note, but a plum — a berry — a peach — it
would be as safe as it was unseen. This old
house of a pair of goldfinches would thus be-
come the home of our fledgling hopes : every
day a new brood of vows would take flight
across its rim into our bosoms.

Watching my chance during the afternoon,
when the sewing-girl was not there. I rushed
over and pushed the stick up to the window.

153

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(7J6) 872-4503

" Georgiana," I called out, "feel in the
nest ! "

She hurried to the window with her sewing
in her arms. The nest swayed to and fro on
a level with her nose.

" What is it.' " she cried, drawing back with
extreme distaste.

" Feel in it ! " I repeated.

" I don't wish to feel in it," she said. " Take
it away ! "

"There's a young dove in it," I persisted —
•' a young cooer."

" I don't wish any young cooers," she said,
with a grimace.

Seeing that she was not of my mind, I added,
pleadingly : " It's a note from me, Georgiana.
This is going to be our Httle private post-
ofifice ! " Georgiana sank back into her choir.
She reappeared with the flush of apple-blossoms
and her lashes wet with tears of laughter. But
I do not think that she looked at me unkindly.
"Our little private post-office," I persisted,
confidingly.

" How many mere little private things are
we going to have .-' " she inquired, plaintively.

"I can't wait here forever," I said. "This
is growing weather; I might sprout."

154

" A dry stick will not," said Georgiana, simply,
and went back to her sewing.

I took the hint, and propped the pole against
the house under the window. Later, when I
took it down, my note was gone.

I have set the pole under Georgiana's window
several times within the last two or three days.
It looks like a little dip-net, high and dry in
the air ; but so far as I can see with my unaided
eye, it has caught nothing so large as a gnat.
It has attracted no end of attention from the
birds of the neighbourhood, however, who never
saw a goldfinch's nest swung to the end of a
leafless pole and placed where it could be so
exactly reached by the human hand. In par-
ticular, it has fallen under the notice of a pair
of wrens, which are like women, in that they
usually have some secret business behind their
curiosity. The business in this case is the
matter of their own ne t, which they have
located in a broken horse-collar in my saddle-
house. At such seasons they are alert for
appropriating building materials that may have
been fetched to hand by other birds ; arid they
have already abstracted a piece of candle-wick
from the bottom of my post-office.

Georgiana has been chilly towards me for

155

two days, and I think is doing her best not to
freeze up altogether. I have racked my brain
to know why ; but I fear that my brain is not
of the sort to discover what is the matter with
a woman when nothing really is the matter.
Moreover, as I am now engaged to Gcorgiana,
I have thought it better that she should begin
to bring her explanations to me — the steady
sun that will melt all her uncertain icicles.

At last this morning she remarked, but very
carelessly, " You didn't answer my note."

"What note, Georgiana .-" " I asked, thunder-
struck.

She gave me such a look.

" Didn't you get the note I put into that —
into that — " Her face grew pink with vexa-
tion.

" Did you put a note into the — into the — "
I could not have spoken the word just then.

I retired to my arbour, where I sat for half an
hour with my head in my hands. What could
have become of Gcorgiana's note ? A hand
might have filched it ; unUkely. A gust of wind
might have whisked it out ; impossible. I de-
bated and rejected every hypothesis to the last
one. Acting upon this, I walked straight to the
saddle-house, and in a dark corner peered at the

156

nest of the wrens. A speck of white paper was
visible among the sticks and shavings. I tore
the nest out and shook it to pieces. How those
wrens did rage ! The note was so torn and
mudded that I could not read it. But sup-
pose a jay had carried it to the high crotch
of some locust ! I ran joyfully back to the
window.

" I've found it, Georgiana ! " T called out.

She appeared, looking relieved, but not ex-
actly forgiving.

"Where.?"

My tongue froze to the roof of my mouth.

"Where did you find it .-' " she repeated, im-
periously.

"What do you want to know f or .•' " I said,
savagely.

" Let me see it ! " she demanded.

My clasp on it suddenly tightened.

" Let me see it ! " she repeated, with genuine
fire.

" What do you want to see it for .'' " I said.

She turned away.

" Here it is," I said, and held it up.

She looked at it a long time, and her brows
arched.

" Did the mud-daubers have it } "

157

'"The wrens. Tt was merely a change of
post-office."

" I'd as well write the next one to them," she
said, "since they get the letters."

Georgiana was well aware that she slipped
the note into the nest when they were looking
and I was not; but women — a// women — now
and then hold a man responsible for what they
have done themselves. Sylvia, for instance.
She grew peevish with me the other day be-
cause my garden failed to furnish the particular
flowers that would have assuaged her whim.
And yet for days Sylvia has been helping her-
self with such lack of stint that the poor cHpped
and mangled bushes look at me as I pass sym-
pathetically by them, and say, " If you don't
keep her away, we'd as well be weeds ! "

The truth is that Sylvia's rampant session in
school, involving the passage of the Greatest
Common Divisor — far more dreadful than the
passage of the Beresina — her blue rosettes at
the recent Commencement, and the prospect of
a long vacation, together with further miscellany
appertaining to her age and sex, have strung
the chords of her sentimental being up to the
highest pitch. Feeling herself to be naturally
a good instrument and now perfectly in tune,

158

*^^)t"'^>5i^

3^.

SYLVIA AND THE GOSLING.

159

Sylvia requires that she shall be continually
played upon — if not by one person, then by
another. Nature overloads a tender :y in order
to make it carry straight along its course against
the interference of other tendencies ; and she
will sometimes provide a girl with a great many
young men, at the start, in order that she may
be sure of one husband in the end. The pre-
cautionary swarm in Sylvia's case .seems multi-
tudinous enough to supply her with siKcessive
husbands to the end of her days and in the
teeth of all known esti nates of masculine mor-
tality. How unlike Georgiana !

I think of Georgiana as the single peach on
a tree in a season when they are rarest. Not a
very large peach, and scarcely yet yielding a
blush to the sun, although its long summer heat
is on the wane ; growing high in the air at the
end of a bough and clustered about by its shin-
ing leaves. But what beauty, purity, freshness !
You must hunt to find it and climb to reach it ;
but when you get it, you get it all — there is not
a trace left for another. But Sylvia ! I am
afraid Sylvia is like a big bunch of grapes that
hangs low above a public pathway: each passerby
reaches up and takes a grape.

I caught some one taking a grape the other

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evcnincj — a sort of green grape. Sylvia had
been sending bouquets to the gosling who was
her escort on the evening of her Commencement

— him of the duck trousers and webbed feet.
On one occasion I have observed her walking
along the borders of my garden in his com-
pany and have overheard her telling him that
he could come in and get flowers whenever he
wished.

To cap the climax, after twilight on the even-
ing in question, I strolled out to my arbour for a
quiet hour with thoughts of Georgiana. Whom
should I surprise in there but Sylvia and the
gosling ! deep in the shadow of the vines. He
had his arm around her and was kissing her.

" Upon my honour ! " I said ; and striding over
to him I thrust my hand under his coat-tails,
gripped him by the seat of his ducks, dragged
him head downward to the front fence and
dropped him out into the street.

" Let me catch you in here kissing anybody
again ! " I said.

He had bit me viciously on one of my calves

— which are sizable — as I had dragged him
along ; so that I had been forced to stoop down
and twist him loose by screwing the end of his
spongy nose. I met him on the street early the

162

next morning, and it wore the hue of a wild plu
in its riponcss. I tapped it.

v,ri> c/

A ' ^--'^-

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1 lAPPED IT.

•t^T^.

"Only three persons know of your misbe-
haviour last night," I said. " If you ever breathe

it to a soul that you soiled that child by your
touch, the next time I get hold of you it will not
be your nose : it will be your neck ! "

My mortification at Sylvia's laxness was so
keen that I should have forborne returninj; to
the arbour had I not felt assured that she must
have escaped to the house throu^^h modesty and
sheer shame. But she had not budcjed.

" I blush for you, Sylvia ! " I exclaimed. " I
know all about that fellow ! He shouldn't kiss
— my old cat! "

" I don't see what yoti have to do with it ! "
said Sylvia, placidly. " .And I have waited to
tell you that I hope you will never interrujit
me ,;ain when I am engas^ed in entertaining
a young gentleman."

" Sylvia, my dear child ! " I said, gravely, sit-
ting down beside her. " How old are you .' "

" I am of the proper age to manage my own
affairs," said Sylvia, " with the assistance of my
immediate family."

" Well, I don't think you are," I replied.
" And since your brother is at West Point, there
is one thing that I am going to take the liberty
of telling you, which the other members of your
family may not fully understand. If you were
younger, Sylvia, you might do a good deal of

164

WVP

this :iiul not be hurt by it ; or you mii^ht not be
hurt by it if you were a ^^ood deal older; l)ut at
your aj^^e it is terrible; in time it will affect your
character."

" How old must I be ? " said Sylvia, wickedly.

"Well, in your case," I replied warmly, a
little nettled by her tone, "you'd better abstain
alto[;ethcr."

" And in your case .' " said Sylvia.

" Never mind my case ! " T retorted.

" Ikit I do mind it when I suffer by it," said
Sylvia. " I do mind it if it's going to affect my
character ! "

"You know very well, Sylvia," I rei)licd,
"that I never kissed you but three times, and
then as a brother."

" I do rot wish any one but my brother to
kiss me in that way," said Sylvia, with a pout of
disappointment.

It seemed to me that this was a fitting time
to guide Sylvia's powers of discrimination as to
the way she should act with indifferent men —
and as to the way that different men would try
to act with her.

I had been talking to her in a low tone I do
not know how long. Her ill-nature had quickly
vanished ; she was, in her svay, provoking,

165

'SYLVIA, MY 1)E.\K CIIII.I), HOW ULlJ ARli VOU ? "

1 66

charming. I was sitting close to her. The
moonlight played upon her daring, wilful face
through the leaves of the grape-vines. It was
unpremeditated ; my nature was, most probably,
unstrung at the instant by ungratified longings
for Georgiana ; but suddenly I bent down and
kissed her.

Instantly both Sylvia and I started from the
seat. How long Georgiana had been standing in
the entrance to the arbour I do not know. She
may that instant have come. Jkit there she was,
dressed in white — pure, majestic, with the moon
shining behind her, shedding about her the radi-
ance of a heavenly veil.

" Come, Sylvia," she said, with perfect sweet-
ness ; and, bidding me good-night with the same
gentlewoman's calm, she placed her arm about
the child's waist, and the two sisters passed
slowly and silently out of my garden

At that moment, if I could have squeezed
myself into the little screech-owl perched in a
corner of the arbour, I would gladly have crept
into the hollow of an oak and closed my eyes.
Still, how was I to foresee what I should do ? A
man's conversation may be his own ; his conduct
may vibrate with the e.xtinct movements of his
ancestors.

167

Georgiana's behaviour then was merely the
forerunner of larj^er marvels. For next morn-
ing I wrote a futile drastic treatise on Woman's
inability to understand Man and Man's inability
to understand Himself, and set it under her
window. It made such a roll of paper that the
goldfinch's nest looked as though it were distent
with a sort of misshapen ostrich egg. All day
I waited with a heart as silent as a great clock
run down ; my system of philosophy swung
dead in the air. To my tortured vision as I
eyed it secretly from my porch, it took on the
semblance of one of Sylvia's poetical potatoes,
and I found myself urging in its behalf Sylvia's
fondest epithets : " how homely, yet how beau-
tiful," " little thought of, but very necessary," "un-
ostentatious, but lovely internal appearance."

Towards sunset I took it sadly down. On
top of the nest lay Georgiana's old scarlet
emery-bag stuck full of her needles ! She
had divined what all the writing meant and
v/ould not have it. Instead she sent me this
emblem not only of her forgiveness, but of her
surrender. When a man expects a woman to
scold him and she does not, he either gets to
be a little afraid of her morally or he wants
to take her in his arms. Henceforth, if Georgi-

i68

m0mf

ana were removed to another planet, I would
rather worship her there simply as my evening
or morning star than coexist with any earthly
woman. One thought besccs me : did she
realize that perhaps she herself was the cause
of my misdemeanor.rs with Sylvia? Has she
the penetration to discover that when a woman
is engaged to a man she cannot deny him all
things except at her own peril ?

This proof of her high-mindedness and the
enchanting glimpr.es of her face that she has
vouchsafed me since, goaded me yesterday
morning to despatch a reckless note: "Will
you come to the arbour for a little while to-
night? I have never dared ask this before,
but you know how I have desired it. It is so
much more private there. Write on the back
of this paper one word, 'Yes.' There is a
pencil in the nest."

The shutters were nearly closed, but I caught
sight of the curve of a shoulder and the move-
ment of a busy hand. As I pushed the note
up I said :

" Read it at once. I am waiting;.'

A hand came out and took in the note, then
the pencil ; then note and pencil were put back.
On the former was written, "Yes."

1 69

I think I must hava done a dozen things in
five minutes, and then I started aimlessly off to
town. On the way I met Georgiana.

" Good God, Georgiana! " I exclaimed. " You
here .? "

" Where else } " said she. " And why not } "

"I thought I just saw you at the window
— " And then my awful soul within me
said: " H-sh-sh-sh ! Not a word of this to a
human being ! "

After supper last night I called old Jack and
Dilsy hito the garden, and led them around it,
giving orders; thence to the arbour, where I
bade them sit down.

In the year of 1805 Mr. Jefferson, as presi-
dent of the Philosophical Society, ordered exca-
vations to be made at Big Bone Lick in Ken-
tucky for the skeletons of extinct animals. My
father, who was interested in antiquities, had
had much correspondence with Mr. Jefferson
in regard to earlier discoveries at that spot ;
and when this expedition was undertaken he
formed one of the explorers. Jack, his servant,
at that time a strapping young fellow, had been
taken along as one of the negroes who were to
do the digging.

The wonders then unearthed have always

170

been the greenest spot in old Jack's memory ;
so that they have been growing larger ever
since. Whenever I wish to hear him discourse
with the dogmatic bluster of a sage who had
original information as to geological times, I
set Jack to talking about the bones of the
Mastodon-Maximus, the name of which he gets
from me, with a puzzled shake of his head,
about regularly once a year. It is my private
opinion that old Jack believes Big Bone Lick
to have been the place where the Ark settled,
and these to have been the bones of animals
that had been swept out by Noah on landincr

T •

Last night I had merely to ask him whether
he credited the story of an old traveller that he
had once used some ribs found there for his
tent-poles and a too^n for his hominy beater;
whereupon DiLsy, foreseeing what was coming,
excused herself on the plea of sudden rheuma-
tism and went to bed, as I wished she should.

The hinges on the little private gate under
Georgiana's window I keep rusty ; this enables
me to note when Lny one enters my garden. Bv-
and-by I heard the hinges softly creak, where-
upon I feigned not to believe what Jack was
telling me ; whereupon he fell into an harangue
of such affectionate and sustained vehemence

'Wm

that when the hinges creaked again I was never
able to determine. Was ever such usage made
before of an antediluvian monster?

To-day the sewing-girl thrust out spiteful
faces at me several times.

She is the one that helped Gcorgiana last
year when she was making her wedding-clothes
to marry the West Point cousin. God keej) him
safely in the distance, or guide him firmly to the
van of war ! How docs a woman feel when she
is making her wedding-clothes for the second
time and for another man .-' I know very well
how the other man feels. Upon mv urging
Georgiana to marry me at once — nature does
not recognize engagements ; they ire a device
of civilization— -she protested :

" But I must get ready ! Think of the sew-
ing!"

" Oh, bother ! " I grumbled. " Where are all
those clothes that you made last year .'' "

How was I to suppose that Georgiana must
have everything made over as part of her feel-
ing for me .-' I would not decree it otherwise ;
yet I question whether this delicacy may not
impose reciprocal obligations, and remove from
my life certain elements of abiding comfort.
What if it should engendc; a prejudice against

172

my own time-worn acc|uaintanccs — the famil-
iars of my fireside ? It m\<j;ht be justifiable
sagacity in me to keep them locked up for the
first year or so after Georgiana and I become a
diune bein,<j; ; and, u])on the whole, she should
never know what may have been the premarital
shortcomings of my wardrobe as respects things
unseen. No matter how wc^l a bachelor may
appear dressed, there is no telling what he con-
ceals as to his being darned or undarned. I
feel sure that the retrospective discovery of a
ravelling would somehow displease Georgiana
as a feature of our courtship. Nature is very
stringent here, very guarded, truly universal.
Invariably the young men of my day grow
lavish in the use of unguents when they are
preparing for natural selection; and I flatter
myself that even my own garments — in their
superficial aspects at least, and during my long
pursuit of Georgiana — have not been very far
from somewhat slightly ingratiating.

This pursuit is now drawing to a close. It
is nearly the last of June. She has given me
her word that she will marry me early in Sep-
tember. Two months for her to get the bridal
feathers ready; two for me to |)rei-)are the nest.

I have not yet breathed our engagement to

173

««■>

Mrs. Walters. To tell her and not expect her
to tell would be like giving a thump to the dry
head of a thistle on a breezy day and not ex-
pecting the seed to go flying off in a hundred
directions.

174

,-«<v

— -'i )^

'J^ f^ HAVE forgotten Nature.

I barely know that

July, now nearly gone,

has passed, sifted with

sweetness and ablaze

with light. Time has

swept on, the world run

round ; but I have stood

motionless, abiding the

hour of my marriage as a tree the season of its

leaves. For all that it looks so calm, within

175

p;ocs on a tremendous surging of sap against
its moments of efflorescence.

After which I pray that, not as a tree, but
as a man, I may have a little peace. When
Georgiana confessed her love, I had supposed
this confession to mark the end of her elusive-
ness. When later on she presented to me the
symbol of a heart pierced with needles, I had
taken it for granted that thenceforth she would
settle down into something like a state of pre-
nuptial domestication, growing less like a swift
and more like a hen. But there is nothing gal-
linaceous about my Georgiana. I took posses-
sion of her vow and the emery-ball, not of her ;
the privilege was merely given to plant my flag-
staff on the uncertain edge of an unknown land.
In war it sometimes becomes necessary to devas-
tate a whole country in order to control a single
point : I should be pleased to learn what portion
of the earth's surface I am required to subdue
ere I shall hold one little citadel.

As for me, Georgiana requires that I shall be
a good deal like an old rock jutting out of the
quiet earth : never ruffled, never changing either
on the surface or at heart, bearing whatever falls
upon me, be it frost or sun, and warranted to
waste away only by a sort of impersonal disinte-

176

gration at the rate of half an inch to the thou-
sand years. Meantime she exacts for herself the
privilege of dwelling near as the delighted cave
of the winds. The part of wisdom in me then
is not to heed each sallying gust, but to capture
the cave and drive the winds away.

For I know in whom I have believed; I know
that this myriad caprice is but the deepening of
excitement on the verge of captivity; I know
that on ahead lie the regions of perpetual calm
— my Islands of the Blest.

Geoi-giana does not i)Uiy upon the pianoforte,
or, as Mrs. Walters would declare, she docs not
perform upon the instrument. Sylvia does ; she
performs, she executes. There are times when
she will e.xecute a piece called "The Last Hope"
until the neighbours are filled with ciespair and
ready to stretch their heads on the block to any
mc e merciful executioner. Nor does Georgi-
ana sing to company in the parlour. That is
Sylvia's gift; and upon the whole it was this
unmitigated practice in the bosom — and in the
ears — of her family that enabled Sylvia to
shine with such vocal effulgence in the pro-
cession on the last Fourth of July and devote
a pair of unflagging lungs to the service of her
country.

But Gcorgiana I have never known to sinpj
except when sewing and alone, as the way of

ii'' *

SYLVIA PERFORMING.

women often is. During a walk across the
summer fields my foot has sometimes paused at

178

the brink of a silvery runlet, and [ have followed
it backward in search of the sprinrr. It may
lead to the ed^e of a dark wood ; thence inward
deeper and deeper; disai)pcaring at last in a
nook of coolness and shadow. }^rccn leaves and
mystery. The overheard rill of Geor^iana's
voice issues from inner depths of bein^; that no
human soul has ever visited, or perhaps will ever
visit. What would I not give to thread my way,
bidden and alone, to that far region of uncap-
tured loveliness.?

Of late some of the overheard lullabies have
touched me inexpressibly. They beat upon my
car like the musical reveries of future mother-
hood — they betoken in Georgiana's maiden-
hood the dreaming unrest of the maternal.

One morning not long ago, with a sort of piti-
ful gaycty, her song ran in the wise of saying
how we should gather our rosebuds whilJ we
may. The warning could not have been ad-
dressed to me ; I shall gather mine while I may
— the unriflcd rose of Georgiana's life, heart
and spirit.

Naturally she and I have avoided the subject
of the Cardinal. But to the tragedy of his death
was joined one circumstance of such coarse and
brutal unconcern that it had left me not only

179

remorseful but resentful. As we sat together
the other evening, after one of those silences
thai" fall unregarded between us, I could no
longer forbear to face an understanding.

" Georgiana," I said, "do you know what
became of the red-bird .? "

Unwittingly the colour of reproach must have
lain upon my words, for she answered quickly
with yet more in hers —

" I had it buried ! "

It w.s my turn to be surprised.

" Are you sure .'' *'

" I am sure. I told them where to bury it ; I
showed them the very spot — under the cedar.
They told me they had. Why .? "

I thought it better that she should learn the
truth.

" You know we can't trust our negroes. They
disobeyed you. They lied to you ; they never
buried it. They threw it on the ash-pile. The
pigs tore it to pieces ; I saw them ; they were
rooting at it and tearing it to pieces."

She had clasped her hands, and turned
towards me in acute distress. After a while,
with her face aside, she said, slowly —

" And you have believed that I knew of this
— that I permitted it.? "

i8o

" I have believed nothing. I have waited to
understand."

A few minutes later she said, as if to herself,
" Many a person would have been only too glad
to believe it, and to blame me." Then foldin<r
her hands over one of mine, she said, with tears
in her eyes :

"Promise me -promise me, Adam, until we
are married, and — yes, after we are married —
as long as I live, that you will never believe any-
thing of me until you know that it is true ! "

" I do promise, dear, dear, dearest one ! " I
cried, trying to draw her to me, but she would
not permit it. " And you ? "

"I shall never misunderstand," she replied,
as with a flash of white inward light. " I know
that you can never do anything that will make
me think the less of you."

Since the sad, sad day on which I caused the
death of the Cardinal, I have paid little heed to
the birds. The subject has been a sore one.
Besides, my whole life is gradually changing
under the influence of Georgiana, who draws
me farther and farther away from Nature, and
nearer and nearer to my own kind.

When, two years ago, she moved into this

i8i

part ol' the State, 1 dwelt on the outskirts of the
town and of humanity. On the side of them lay
the sour land of my prose ; the country, nature,
rolled away on the other side as the sweet deep
ocean of my poetry. I called my neighbours
my manifestations of prose ; my doinjj^s with the
townspeople, prose passages. The manifesta-
tions and passages scarce made a scrim jd vol-
ume. There was Jacob, who lived on his
symptoms and died without any ; there was
and there is Mrs. Walters — may she last to the
age of the eagle. In town, a couple of prose
items of cheap quality : an old preacher who
was willing to save my soul 'vhile my strawber-
ries were ripe, and an old doctor who cared to
save my body so long as he could eat my pears
— with others interested severally in my aspara-
gus, my rhubarb, my lilies, and sweet-peas.
Always not forgetting a few inestimably whole-
some, cheery, noble souls, who sought me out
on the edge of human life rather than succeeded
in drawing me over the edge towards the centre.
But this Georgiana has been doing — long
without my knowing it. I have become less a
woodsman, more a civilian. Unless she relents,
it may end in my ceasing to be a lover of birds,
and running for the legislature. Seeing me so

182

much on the streets, one of my Icl low-townsmen
declared the other day that if 1 would consent
to come out of the cane-brakes for good they
would make me postmaster.

It has fallen awkwardly for me that this
enforced transformation in my tastes and habits
should coincide with the season of my love-
makin--; and it is well that Gcorgiana does not
demand in me the capering or strutting manners
of those young men of my day who likewise are
exerting themselves to marry. I am more like
a badger than like one of them ; and indeed I
find the image of my fate and my condition in a
badger-like creature close at hand.

For the carpenter who is at work upon bridal
repairs in my house has the fancy not uncommon
among a class hereabouts to keep a tamed rac-
coon. He brings it with him daily, and fastens
it by its chain to a tree in my front yard: a
rough, burly, knowing fellow, loving wild nature,
but forced to acquire the tediousness of civiliza-
tion ; meantime leading a desperately hampered
life ; wondering at his own teeth and claws, and
sorely put to it to invent a decent occupation.
So am I ; and as the raccoon paces everywhere
after the carpenter, so do I in spirit pace every-
where after Georgiana ; only his chain seems

183

longer and more easily to be broken. The rest-
less beast enlivens his captivity by the keenest
scrutiny of every object within his range ; I too
have busied myself with the few people that
have come this way.

First, early in the month Georgiana's brother
— down from West Point, very stately, and with
his brow stern, as if for gory war. When I
called promptly to pay my respects, as his
brother-in-law to be, he was sitting on the front
porch surrounded by a subdued family, Geor-
giana alone remaining unawcd. He looked me
over indifferently, as though I were a species of
ancient earthworks not worth any more special
reconnoissance, and continued his most superior
remarks to his mother on the approaching visit
of three generals.

Upon leaving I invited him to join me on
the morrow in a squirrel hunt with small-bores,
whereupon he manifested surprise that I was
acquainted with the use of firearms. Where-
upon I remarked that I would sometimes hit
big game if it were so close that I could not
miss it, and further urged him to have breakfast
with me at a very early hour in order that we
might reach the woods while the squirrels were
at theirs.

184

rc»vf 1 i

HE WAS SiniNiu UN THE l-ROSt PORCH.

185

Going home, I knocked at the cabin where
Jack and Dilsy lay snoring side by side with
the velocity of rival saw-mills, and begged Dilsy
to give me a bite about daybreak — coffee and
corn-batter cakes — saying that I could get
breakfast when I returned. I shared this scant
bite with my young soldier — to Dilsy's abject
mortification, I not having told h .;r of his com-
ing. Then we set off at a brisk pace towards a
great forest south of the town some five miles
away, where the squirrels had appeared and
were doing great damage, being the last of a
countless plague of them that overran northern
and central Kentucky a year ago.

On the way I dragged him through several
cane-brakes, a thicket of blackberry ; kept him
out all day ; said not a word about dinner ;
avoided every spot where he could have gotten
a swallow of water ; not once sat down to rest ;
towards the middle of the afternoon told him I
desired to take enough squirrels home to make
Jack a squirrel-skin overcoat, and asked him to
carry while I killed ; loaded him with squirrels,
neck, shoulders, breast, back and loins, till as he
moved he tottered and swayed like a squirrel
pyramid ; about sundown challenged him to
what he had not yet had, some crack shooting,

186

mim'

TUF.N WT. sr.T 1)1 !•■ AT A llklsK I'ACK.

187

which in that lij^dit requires young eyesight, and
barked the scjuirrel for him four times ; later
still snuffed the candle for him, having brought
one along for the i)ur]K)se ; and then, with my
step fresh, led him swiftly home.

He has the blood of Georgiana in him, and
stood it liKe a man. But he was nearly dead.
He has saluted me since as though I were a
murderous garrison intrenclied on the Heights
of Abraham.

Then the three generals of the United States
army descended in a body — or in three bodies ;
and the truth is that their three bodies scarce held
them, they were in such a state of flesh when
they reached Iventucky, and of being perpetu-
ally overfed while they remained. The object
of their joint visit under a recent act of Con-
gress was to locate a military asylum for di.s-
abled soldiers ; and had they stayed much longer
they must have had themselves admitted to their
own institution as foremost of the disabled.
Having spent some time at the Lower Blue
Lick Springs, the proposed site, — where this
summer are over five hundred guests of our
finest Southern society, — they afterwards were
drawn around with immense solidity towards
Louisville, Frankfort, Maysville, Paris, and Lex-

i88

^5^A-r

Tin; THREE GENERALS.

189

ingtnn, being everywhere received with such
honours and provisions that these great guns
were in danger of becoming spiked forever in
both barrel and tube.

Upon reaching this town one of them de-
tached himself from the heated rolling mass and
accepted the invitation of young Cobb — who
had formed the acquaintance at West Point —
to make a visit in his home. He had not been
there many days before he manoeuvred to estab-
lish a private military retreat for himself in the
affections of Mrs. Cobb. So that his presence
became a profanation to Georgiana, whose rev-
erence for her heroic father burns like an altar
of sacred fire, and who.se nature became rent
in twain between her mother's suitor and her
brother's guest.

A most pestiferous variety of caterpillar has
infested the tops of my cherry-trees this summer,
and during the general's encampment near Mrs.
Cobb I happened several times to be mounted
on my step-ladder, busy with my pruning-shears,
when he was decoying her around her garden, —
just over the fence, — buckled in to suffocation,
and with his long epaulettes golden in the sun
like tassels of the corn. I was engaged in
exterminating this insect on the last day of his

190

rs: - ^^

V'.*'' ;vy^- '■*^ >'-«^"'U' Vfcil^'"^ -■-■^,!iii^ JSL..■

S?f>^i.

;ri^a^,;

?^^:

V'^;

'/iff

;'v

.\\ r

.^-f^'.r <

^'■y rim ■ \^mJ^

:K'c

^^^r

"I HAVK REKN MARRIED, SIR!"
'91

>}^jk-iA^-^'n',

sojourn. They were passing almost beneath me
on the other side ; he had been talking ; i heard
her brief reply, in a voice low and full of dignity,

" I have been married, sir ! "

" Mother of Gcorgiana ! " I cried, within my-
self. Hut had she ever thought of taking a
second husband she must have seen through
" Old Drumbeater," as Sylvia called him. There
were times when their breakfast would be late
— for the sake of letting his chicken be broiled
in slow perfection or his rolls or waflles come to
a faultless brown ; and I, being at work near the
garden fence, would hear him tramping up and
down the walk on the other side and swearing
at a family that had such irregular meals. The
camel, a lean beast, requires an extraordinary
supply of food, which it proceeds to store away
in its hump as nourishment to be drawn upon
while it is crossing the desert. There may be
no long campaigning before the general ; but if
there were and ratioi,^ were short, why could he
not live upon h's own back .^ It is of a thick-
ness, a roundness, and an impenetrability that
would have justified Jackson in using him as a
cotton-bale at the battle of New Orleans.

Thus in my little corner of the world wc have
all been at the same business of love, and I

192

■C.'r

THE CARrENTER AVD THE SKWINC-rjRr,.

O 193

■

wonder whether the corner be not the world
itself : Mrs. Cobb and the general, Georgiana
and I, the sewing-girl and the carpenter; for I
had forgotten to note how quickly these two
have found out that they want each other. My
arbour is at his service, if he wishes it ; and Jack
shall keep silent about the mastodon.

It is true that from this sentimental enumera-
tion I have omitted the name of Mrs. Walters ;
but there is a secret here which not even Georgi-
ana herself will ever get from mc. Mrs. Walters
came to this town twenty years ago from the
region of Bowling Green. Some years after-
wards I made a trip into that part of the State
to hear the mocking-bird — for it fills those
more southern groves, but never visits ours ;
and while there I stepped by accident on this
discovery : TJicre never ivas aiif Mr. Wii Iters.
It is her maiden name. But as I see the free-
dom of her life and reflect upon the things that
a widow can do and an old maid cannot — with
her own sex and with mine — I commend her
wisdom and leave her at peace. Indeed I have
gone so far, when she has asked for my sym-
pathy, as to lament with her Mr. Walters' s
death. After all, what great difference is there
between her weeping for him because he is

194

no more, and her weeping for him because he
never was ? After which she freshens herself
up with another handkerchief, a little Florida
water, and a pigment of May roses from the
apothecary's.

And I have omitted the name of Sylvia ; but
then Sylvia's name, like that of Lot's wife, can
never be used as one of a class, and she herself
must always be spoken of alone. (If Sylvia had
been Lot's wife, she would not hc^.-e turned to
a pillar of salt, she would most probably have
become a geyser.)

T don't know why, but she went on a visit to
Henderson after that evening in the arbour.
I suspect the governing power of Georgiana's
wisdom to have been put forth here, for within
a few days I received from Sylvia a letter which
she asked me not to show to Gcorgiana, and in
which she invited me to correspond with her
secretly. The letter was of a singularly glucose
quality as to the emotions. Throughout she
referred to herself as "the c.\ile," although it
was plain that she wrote in the highest spirits ;
and in concluding she openly charged Gcorgiana
with having given her a black eye — a most
unspeakable phrase, surely picked up in the
school-room. As a return for the black eye,

195

Sylvia said that she had composed a poem to
herself, a copy of which she enclosed.

I quote Sylvia's commemorative verses upon
her wrongs and her banishment. They show
features of metrical excess, and can scarcely
claim to reflect the polish of her calmer art ;
but they are of value to me as proving that
whatever the rebuke Georgiana may have given,
it had rebounded from that elastic spirit.

LINES TO MYSELF

Oh ! she was a hn-cly girl.

So pretty and so fair.
With gentle, love-lit t'yt's.

And wavy, dark brown hair.

I loved the gentle girl,

P)Ut. f)Ii ! I heaved a sigh
When first she told me she could see

Out of only aiw eye.

But soon I thought within myself
I'd better save my tear and sigh

To bestow upon an older person I know
Who has more ihan one eye.

She is brave and intelligent
Too. She is witty and wise.

She'll accomplish more now than another
person I know
Who has two eyes.

196

^2r - -Ttt-^ ' mj

siiK cufi.i) SEK orr uk om.v cink i.vk.

197

Ah, ) oil need not pity her !

S?it- needs not your tear and sigh.
She'll make good use, I tell you,

Of her o/w remaining eye.

In the home where we are hastening.
In our eternal Home on High,

See Xhatj'ou be not rivalled
By the girl with only one eye.^

Having thus dealt a thrust at Georgiana,
Sylvia seems to have turned in the spirit of
revenge upon her mother ; and when she came
horr.e some days ago she brought with her a
distant cousin of her own age — a boy, enor-
mously fat — whom she soon began to decoy
around the garden as her mother had been
decoyed by the general. Further to satirize
the similarity of loverr., she one day pinned
upon his shoulders rosettes of yellow ribbon.

Sylvia has now passed from Scott to Moore ;
and several times lately she has made herself
heard in the garden with recitations to the fat
boy on the subject of Peris weeping before the
gates of Paradise, or warbling elegies under the

1 Miss .Sylvia could not have l)een speaking seriously when
she wrote that she had " composed " this poem. It is known
to be the work of another hand, though Sylvia certainly tam-
pered with the original and pr(/duced a version of her own.

J. L. A.

198

■W'

.'<'-<\C

ROSEVrtS UK Ytl.I.oW KUiiiuN.

199

green sea in regard to Araby's daughter. There
is real aptness in the latter reference ; for this
boy's true place in nature is the deep seas of
the polar regions, where animals are coated
with thick tissues of blubber. If Sylvia ever
harpoons him, as she seems seriously bent on
doing, she will have to drive her weapon in
deep.

Yesterday she sprang across to me with her
hair flying and an open letter in her hand.

"Oh, read it! " she cried, her face kindling.

It turned out to be a letter from the great
Mr. Prentice, of the \^o\.\\'s,\\\\c.Joiiynal, accepting
a poem she had lately sent him, and assigning
her a fi.xed place among his vast and twinkling
galaxy of Kentucky poetesses. The title of
the poem was, " My Lover Kneels to None but
God."

" I infer from this," I said gravely, " that
your lover is a Kentuckian."

•' He is," cried Sylvia. " Oh, his peerless
haughty look ! "

"Well, I congratulate you, Sylvia," I con-
tinued mildly, " upon having such an editor and
such a lover ; but I really think that your lover
ought to kneel a little to Mr. Prentice on this
one occasion."

200

" Never ! " cried Sylvia. " He kneels only
to God and me ! "

-+tfA.

SHE SI'KANG ACROSS TO ME.

" Some day when you meet Mr. Prentice,
Sylvia," I continued further, "you will want

201

to be very nice to him, and you might give him
something new to parse."

Sylvia studied me dubiously : the subject is
not one that reassures her.

" Because the other day I heard a very great
friend of Mr. Prentice's say of him that when
he was fifteen he could parse every sentence
in Virgil and Homer. And if he could do that
then, think what he must be able to do now, and
what pleasure his parsing passion must afford
him ! "

I would not imbitter Sylvia's joy by intimat-
ing that perhaps Mr. Prentice's studious regard
for much of the poetry that he published was
based upon the fact that only he could parse it.

There has been the most terrible trouble with
the raccoon.

This morning the carpenter tied him in my
yard as usual; but some time during the fore-
noon, in a fit of rage at his confinement, he
pulled the collar over his head and was gone.
Whither and how long no one knew ; but it
seems that at last, by dint of fences and trees,
he attained to the unapproachable distinction
of standing on the comb of Mrs, Walters's house
— poor Mrs. Walters, who has always held

202

him in such deadly fear! she would as soon
have had him on the comb of her head.
Advancing along the roof, he mounted the
chimney. Glancing down this, he perhaps
reached the conclusion that it was more like
nature and a hollow tree than anything that
civilization had yet been able to produce, and
he proceeded to descend to the ground again
by so dark and friendly a passage. His prog-
ress was stopped by a bundle of straw at the
bottom, which he quickly tore away, and hav-
ing emerged from a grove of asparagus in the
fireplace, he found him.self not on the earth,
but in Mrs. VValters's bedroom. In what ways
he now vented his ill-humour' is not clear; but
at last he climbed to the bed, white a.'- no fuller
, could white it, and he dripping with soot. Here
the ground beneath him was of such a suspicious
and unreasonable softness that he apparently
resolved to dig a hole and see what was the
matter. In the course of his excavation he
reached Mrs. Walters's feather-bed, upon which
he must have fallen with fresh violence, tooth
and nail, in the idea that so many feathers could
not possibly mean feathers only.

It was about this time that Mrs. Walters
returned from town, having left every window

203

closed and every door locked, as is her custom.
She threw open her door and started in, but

THEN HER EYES CAUGHT SIC.H r.

paused, being greeted by a snow-storm of goose
feathers that filled the air and now drifted out-
ward.

204

"Why, what on earth is the matter?" she
exclaimed, peering in, blank with bewilderment.
Then her eyes .ught sight of what had once
been her bed. Sitting up in it was the raccoon,
his long black jaws bearded with down, ^is head
and ears stuck about with feathers, and his eyes
blazing green with defiance.

She slammed and locked the door.

" Run for the sheriff ! " she cried, in terror,
to the boy who had brought her market basket ;
and she followed him as he fled.

"What is it, Mrs. Walters.?" asked the
sheriff, sternly, meeting her and bringing the
handcuffs.

" There's somebody in my bed ! " she cried,
wringing her hands. " I believe it's a ."

" It's my 'coon," said the carpenter, laughing ;
for by this time we were all gathered together.

" What a foolish 'coon ! " said the sewing-girl.

" Oh, I\Ir,s. Walters ! You are like Little Rod
Riding-hood!" said Sylvia.

" I can't arrest a "coon, madam ! " exclaimed
the sheriff, red in the neck at being made
ridiculous.

" Then arrest the carpenter ! " cried poor, un-
happy, excited Mrs. Walters, bursting into tears
and hiding her face on Georgiana's shoulder.

205

And among us all Gcorgiana was the only
comforter. She laid aside her own work for

GSfSk^

|'',MfTO;:f<

.. .^'

, \i\

f\^^

"WHAT IS IT, MRS. WALTERS?"

that day, spent the rest of it as Samaritan to her
desperately wounded neighbour, and at nightfall,
over the bed, now peaceful and snowy once more,

206

she spread a marvellous priceless quilt that she
had long been making to exhibit at the ap-
proaching World's Fair at New York.

"Georgiana," I said, as I walked home with
her at bedtmie, '< it seems to me that things hap-
pen in order to show you off."

" Only think ! " Georgiana replied ; " she will
never get into bed again without a shiver and a
glance at the chimney. I begrudge her the
quilt for one reason ; it has a piece of one of
your old satin waistcoats in it."

" Did she tell you that she had had those bed-
clothes ever since her marriage ? "

"Yes; but I have always felt that she
couldn't have been married very long."
" How long should you think ? "
"Oh, well — "

"And yet she certainly has the clearest pos-
sible idea of Mr. Walters. I imagine that very
few women ever come to know their husbands
as perfectly as Mrs. Walters knew hers."
"Or perhaps wish to."

207

THE SAGACIOUS UI.U SOUL.

208

Ill

KVERAL c.irthquakes have

lately been felt in this

part of the f,^lol)e. Coming

events cast their shocks

before.

The end of August —
the ni^'-ht before my
marriage.

The news cf it certainly came like the shock
of an earthquake to many people of the town,
who know perfectly w '1 that no woman will
allow the fruit and flowers to be carried off a
place as a man will, "'he sagacious old soul
who visits me yearly for young pie-plant actu-
ally hurried out and begged for a basketful of
the roots at once, thus taking time — and the
rhubarb — by the forelock. And the old epicu-
rean harpy whose passion is asparagus, having
accosted me gruffly on the street with an inquiry
P 209

as to the truth of my engagement and been
quietly assured how true it was, informed nie
to my face that any man situated as happily as
I am was an infernal fool to entangle himself
with a wife, and bade me a curt and everlasting
good-morning on the spot. Yet every day the
theme of this old troubadour's talk around the
hotels is female entanglements — mendacious,
unwifely, and for him unavailing.

Through divers channels some of my fellow-
creatures — specimens of the most dreadful prose
— have let me know that upon marrying I shall
forfeit their usurious regard. As to them, I
shall relapse into the privacy of an orchard that
has been plucked of its fruit. But my wonder-
ment has grown on the other hand at the nian-
ber of those to whom, as the significant unit of
a family instead of a bachelor zero, I have now
acquired a sterling mercantile valuation. Upon
the whole, I may fairly compute that my rela-
tion to the human race has been totally changed
by the little I may cease to give away and by
the less that I shall need to buy.

And Mrs. Walters ! Although I prefer to
think of Mrs. Walters as a singer, owing to her
unaccountable powers of reminiscential vocali-
zation, I have upon occasion classified her

210

among the waders; and certainly, upon the
day when my engagement to Georgiana trans-
pired, she waded not only around the town but
all over it, sustained by a buoyancy of spirit
that enabled her to keep her head above water
in depths where her feet no longer touched the
bottom.

It was the crowning triumph of this vacant
soul's life to boast that she had made this
match ; and for the sake of giving her so
much happiness, I think I should have been
willing to marry Georgiana whether I loved
her or not.

So we are all happy : Sylvia, who thus enters
upon a family right to my flowers and to the
distinction of being the only Miss Cobb; Dilsy,
who, while gathering vegetables about the gar-
den, long ago began to receive little bundles of
quilt pieces thrown down to her with a smile
and the right word from the window above;
and Jack, who is to drive us on our bridal-trip
to the Blue Lick Springs, where he hopes to
renew his scientific studies upon the ma.xillary
bones. I have hesitated between Blue Lick
and Mud Lick, though to a man in my condi-
tion there can be no great difference between
blue and mud. And I had thought of the

211

Harrodsburg Springs, but the negro musicians
there were lately hurried off to Canada by the
underground railway, out of which fact has
grown a lawsuit for damages between the
proprietor and his abolitionist guest.

A few weeks ago I entrusted a secret to
Georgiana. I told her that before she conde-
scended to shine upon this part of the world —
now the heavenlier part — I had been engaged
upon certain researches and discoveries relating
to Kentucky birds, especially to the Kentucky
warbler. I admitted that these studies had
been wretchedly put aside under the more
pressing necessity of fixing the attention of all
my powers, ornithological and other, upon her
garden window. But as I placed specimens of
my notes and drawings in her hand, I remarked
gravely that after our marriage I should be
ready to push my work forward without delay.

All this was meant to give her a delightful
surprise ; and indeed she examined the evi-
dences of my undertaking with devouring and
triumphant eagerness. But what was my amaze-
ment when she handed them back in silence,
and with a face as white, though as fragrant,
as a rose.

212

o,tt*-^'. -^ >

.Sl'KCl.MKNS OK MV NOTKS AND nRA\VIN(;s.

" I have distressed you, Georgiana ! " I
cried, "and my only thought had been to give
you pleasure. I am always doing something
wrong!"

She closed her eyes and passed her fingers
searchingly across her brow, as we sometimes
instinctively try to brush away our cares. Then
she sat looking down rather pitifully at her
palms, as they lay in her lap.

"You have shared your secret with me," she
said solemnly, at length. " I'll share mine with
you. It is the only fear that I have ever felt
regarding our future. It has never left me ;
and what you have just shown me fills me with
terror."

I sat aghast.

" I am not deceived," she continued ; " you
have not forgotten nature. It draws you more
powerfully than anything else in the world.
Whenever you speak of it, you say the right
thing, you find the right word, you get the
right meaning. With nature alone you are
perfectly natural. Towards society you show
your shabby, awkward, trivial, uncomfortable
side. But these drawings, these notes — there
lies your power, your gift, your home. You
truly belong to the woodsmen."

214

I listened to this as to fresh talk about a
stranger.

" Do you not foresee what will happen ? "
she went on, with emotion. " After we have
been married a whiie you will begin to wander
off — at first for part of a day, then for a day,
then for a day and a night, then for days and
nights together. That was the way with Audu-
bon, that was the way with Wilson, that is the
way with Thoreau, that will be the way with
all whom nature draws as it draws vou. And
me — think of me — at home! A woman not
able to go with you ! Not able to wade the
creeks and swim the rivers ! Not able to sleep
out in the brown leaves, to endure the rain, the
cold, the travel ! And so I shall never be able
to fill your life with mine as you fill mine with
yours. As time passes, I shall fill it less and
less. Every spring nature will bo just as young
to you ; I shall be always older. The water
you love ripples, never wrinKles. I shall cease
rippling and begin wrinkling. No matter what
happens, each summer the birds get fresh feath-
ers ; only think how my old ones will never
drop o'.t. I shall want you to go on with your
work. If I am to be your wife, I must be wings
to you. But think of compelling me to furnish

215

you the wings with which to leave me ! What
is a little book on Kentucky birds in comparison
with my happiness ! "

She was so deeply moved that my one desire
was to uproot her fears on the spot.

"Then there shall be no little book on Ken-
tucky birds ! " I cried. " I'll throw those things
into the fire as soon as I go home. Only say
what you wish me to be, Georgiana," I con-
tinued, laughing, "and I'll be it — if it's the
town pump."

" Then if I could only be the town well," she
said, with a poor little effort to make a heavy
heart all at once go merrily again.

Bent on making it go merrily as long as I
shall live, the following day I called out to her
at the window :

"Georgiana, I'm improving. I'm get*:ing
along."

" What do you mean .'' " she asked.

" Well, in town this morning they chose me
as one of the judges of vegetables at the fair
next month. I said, ' Gentlemen, I expect to be
married before that time, and I do not intend
to be separated from my wife. Will she have
the privilege of accompanying mc among these
competing vegetables .'' ' And last month they

216

5^'

made me director of a turnpike company — I
suppose because it runs through my farm. To-
day at a meeting of the directors I said, ' Gen-
tlemen, how far is this turnpike to run ? I will
direct it to the end of my farm and not a step
farther. I do not wish to be separated from my
wife.'"

Georgiana has teased me a good deal in my
life. It is well to let a woman taste of the
tree of knowledge whose fruit she is fond of
dispensing.

"You'd better be careful!" she said archly.
" Remember, I haven't married you yet."

" I am careful," I replied. " I haven't married
yoH yet, either! My idea, Georgiana," I con-
tinued, " is to plant a grove and raise cocoons.
That would gratify my love of nature and your
fancy for silk dresses. I could have my silk
woven and spun in our manufactory at Newport,
Kentucky; and you know that we couldn't
possibly lose each other among the mulberry-
trees."

"You'd better take care!" she repeated.
"Do you expect to talk to me in this style
after we are married } "

"That will all depcnr' upon how ynu talk to
me," I answered. " But 1 have always under-

217

stood married life to be the season when the
worm begins to turn."

Despite my levity, I have been secretly
stricken with remorse at the monstrous selfish-
ness that lay coiled like a canker in my words.
I was really no better than those husbands who
virtually say to their wives :

" While I was trying to win you, the work of
my life was secondary — you were everything.
Now that I have won you, it will be everything,
and you must not stand in the way."

But the thought is insupportable that Geor-
giana should not be happy with me at any cost.
I divine now the reason of the effort she has
long been making to win me from nature; there-
fore of my own free will I have privately set
about changing the character of my life with
the idea of suiting it to some other work in
which she too may be content. And thus it has
come about that during the August now ended
— always the month of the year in which my
nature will go its solitary way and seek its wood-
land peace — I have hung about the town as
one who is offered for hire to a master whom
he has never seen and for a work that he hates
to do. Many of the affairs that engage t'.j
passions of my fellow-beings are to me as the

218

gray stubble through which I walk in the Sep-
tember fields — the rotting wastage of harvests
long since gathered in. At other times I drive
myself upon their sharp and piercing conflicts
as a bird is blown uselessly again and again by
some too strong a wind upon the spikes of the
thorn. I hear the angry talk of our farmers
and merchants, I listen to the fiery orations of
our statesmen and the warning sermons of our
divines. (Think of a human creature calling
himself a divine.) The troubled ebb and flow
of events in Kentucky, the larger movements
of unrest throughout the great republic— these
have replaced for me the old communings with
nature that were full of music and of peace.

Evening after evening now I turn my con-
versations with Georgia na as gayly as I can
upon some topic of the time. She is not always
pleased with what I style my researches into
civilized society. One evening in particular
our talk was long and seriou.s, beginning in shal-
lows and then steering for deep waters.

"Well, Georgiana," I had .said, " Mi.ss Delia
Webster has suddenly returned to her home in
Vermont."

"And who is Mi.ss Delia Webster'" she had
inquired, with unmistakable acidity.

219

" Miss Delia Webster is the lady who was
sentenced to the State penitentiary tor abduct-
ing our silly old servants into Ohio. Hut the
jury of Kentucky noblemen who returned the
verdict — being married men, and long used to
forgiving a woman anything — petitioned the
governor to pardon Miss Delia on the ground
that she belongs to the sex that can do no
wrong -and be punished for it. Whereupon
the governor, seasoned to the like large experi-
ence, pardoned the lady. Whereupon Miss
Webster, having passed a few weeks in the pen-
itentiary, left, as I stated, for her home in Ver-
mont, followed by her father, who does not, how-
ever, seem to have been able to overtake her."

" If she'd been a man, now," suggested
Georgiana.

"If she'd been a man she would have shared
the fortunes of h> i principal, &" Heverend Mr.
Fairbanks, who has ho/ returned to his home in
Ohio, and will not — for fifteen years."

" Do you think it an agreeable subject of con-
versation .-" " inquired Georgiana.

"Then I will change it," I said. "The other
day the editor of the Smithland Bi'c was walk-
ing along the street with his little daughter and
was shot down by a doctor."

220

"Horrible!" exclaimed (;cor^nana. "Why?"

" Self-defence," I answered. " And last week
in the court-room in .Mduiu Sterling a man was
shot by his brother-in-law during the sitting of
court."

"And why did he kill him?''

"Self-defence!" I answered. " And in Ver-
sailles a man down in the street was assassinated
with a rifle fired from the garret of a tavern.
Self-defence. And in Le.xinj^ton a young man
shot and killed another for drawing his handker-
chief from his pocket. Self-defence! — the sense
of thf^ court being that whatever such an action
might mean in other civilized countries, in Ken-
tucky and under the circumstances — the young
fellows were quarrelling — it naturally betokened
the reaching for a revolver. Thus in Kentucky,
Georgiana, and during a heated discussion, a
man cannot blow his nose but at the risk of his
life."

" I'll see that you never carry a handkerchief,"
said Georgiana. "So remember — don't you
ever reach for one!"

"And the other day in Kddysville," I went
on, " two men fought a duel by going to a doc-
tor's shop and having him open a vein in the
arm of each. Just before they fainted from

221

exhaustion they made signs that their honour
was satisfied, so the doctor tied up the veins.
I see that you don't believe it, but it's true."
" And why did they fight a duel in that way .-' "
"I give it up," I said, "unless it was in self-
defence. We are a most remarkable society of
self-defenders. liut if every man who fights in
Kentucky is merely engaged in warding off a
murderous attack upon his life, who docs all the
murderous attacking ? You know the seal of
our commonwealth : two gentlemen in evening
dress shaking hands and with one voice declar-
ing, ' United we stand, divided we fall.' So far
as the temper of our time goes, these two gen-
tlemen might w^ell be represented as twenty
paces apart, and as calling out, ' United, we
stood ; divided, j'ou fall ! ' Killings and duels !
Killings and duels ! Do you think we need
these as proofs of courage .-' Do you suppose
that the Kentuckians of our day are braver than
the pioneers .-' Do you suppose that any people
ever elevated its ideal of courage in the eyes of
the world by all the homicides and ad the duels
that it could count ? There is only one way in
which any civilized peopl ^ has ever :!one that,
only one way in which any civili/ed people
has ever been able to impress the world very

'>:>■>

deeply with a belief in the reality and the nobil-
ity of its ideal of courage : it is by the warlike
spirit of its men in times of war, and by the
peaceful spirit of its men in times of peace.
Only, you must add this : that when these times
of peace have come on, and it is no longer pos-
sible for such a people to realize its ideal of
courage in arms, it is nevertheless driven to
express the ideal in other ways — by monu-
ments, arches, inscriptions, statues, hterature,
pictures, all in honour of those of their country-
men who lived the ideal before the world and
left it more lustrous in their dying. That is the
full reason why we know how brave a people
the Greeks were — by their peaceful ways of
honouring valour in times of peace. And that
in part is why no nation in the world doubts the
courage of the English, because when the Eng-
lish are not fighting they are forever doing some-
thing to honour those who have fought well. So
that they never have a peace but they turn it
into preparation for the next war.

" And that is why, as the outside world looks
in upon us u---lay and sifts the evidence of
whether <ff not we are a brave people, it does
not find prcK/f of this in our homicides and
duels, bi*t in the spirit of our fon fathers of the

223

■

Revolution, in the soldiers of the wilderness and
of Indian warfare, of the war of 1812, of the
war with Mexico, at Cerro Gordo, at Buena
Vista, at Palo Alto, at Resaca de la Palma.
Wherever the Kentuckians have fought as
soldiers, many or few, on whatever battle-field,
in whatsoever cause, there you may sec whether
they know what it is to be men, and whether
they have an ideal of courage that is worth the
name.

" Then a few years ago in F'rankfort twenty
thousand j)cople followed to the grave the
bodies of thr men who had fallen in Mexico.
The State has raised a monument to them, to
the soldiers cf 1812, to those who fought at the
river Raisin. The Legislature has ordered a
medal to be struck in honour of a boy who
had defended his ensign. No man can make a
public speech in Kentucky without mention of
Encancioo and Monterey, or of the long line of
battles in which every generation of our people
has fought. This is the other proof that in
times of peace we do not forget. It is not
much, but it is of the right kind — it is the
soldier's monument, it is the soldier's medal, it
is the soldier's funeral oration, it is the recogni-
tion by the people of its ideal of courage in

224

times of peace. And with every other brave
people this proof passes as the sign universal.
But our homicides and our duels, nearly all of
them brought about in the name — even under
the fear — of courage, what effect have they
had in giving us abroad our rcjiutation as a
community > I ask myself the question, what
if all the men who have killed their personal
enemies or been killed by them in Kentucky,
and if all the men who have killed their per-
sonal friends or been killed by them in Ken-
tucky, had spent their love of fighting and their
love of courage upon a monument to the Pio-
neers—such a monument as stands nowhere
else in the world, and might f^tly st;.nd in this
State to commemorate the winning of the West ?
Would the world think the better or the worse

of the Kentucky ideal of bravery ?

" I had not meant to talk to you so long on

this subject," I added, in apology, "but I have

been thinking of these things lately since I

have been so much in town."

" I am interested," said Georgiana ; " and as

I agree with you. we need not both .^^peak."

But she looked pained, and I sought to give a

happier turn to the conversation.

"There is only one duel I ever heard of that

Q 22 S

gave mc any pleasure, and that one never came
off. A few years ago a Kentuckian wrote a
political satire on an Irishman in Illinois —
wrote it as a widow. The Irishman wished to
fight. The widow offered to marry the Irish-
man, if such a sacrifice would be accepted as
satisfactory damages. The Irishman sent a
challenge, and the Kentuckian chose cavalry
broadswords of the largest size. lie was a
giant ; he had the longest arms of any man
in Illinois: he could have mowed Erin down
at a stroke like a green milk-weed ; he had
been trained in duelling with oak-trees. You
never heard of him : his name is Abraham
Lincoln."

" I have heard of him, and I have seen him
— in Lnion County before I came here," said
Georgiana, w-ith enthusiasm.

" He came here once to hear Mr. Clay speak,"
I resumeu ; " and I saw them walking together
one day under the trees at Ashland — the two
mf)st remarkable-looking men that I ever beheld
together."

My few acres touch the many of the great
statesman. Get rgian.i and I often hear of the
movements of his life, as two little boats in a
quiet bay are tossed by the storms of the ocean.

226

Any reference to him always makes us thought-
ful, and wo fell silent now.

"Georgiana," I said at length, softly, "it's
all in self-defence. I believe you promised to
marry me in self-defence."

" I did," she said promptly.

" Well, I certainly asked you in self-defence,
Mi.ss Cobb," I replied. "And now in a few
days, according to rhe usage of my time, I am
going to take your life — even at the peril of
my own. If you desire, it is your privilege to
examine the deadly weapons before the hour of
actual combat." and I held out my arms to her
appealingly.

She bent her body delicately aside, as always.

" I am upset," she said di.scouragingly.
"You have been abusing Kentucky."

'^Ah, that is the trouble!" I answered.
"Von wish me to become more interested
in my fellow-creatures. And then you will
not let me speak of what they do. And the
other day you told me that I am not per-
fectly natural with anything but nature. Nature
is the only thing that is perfectly natural with
me. When I study nature there are no delicate
or dangerous or forbidden subjects. The trees
have no evasions. The weeds are honest. Run-

227

ning water is not trying to escape. The sun-
sets are not coloured with hypocrisy. The
Hghtning is not revenge. Everything stands
forth in the sincerity of its being, and nature
invites me to exercise the absolute liberty of my
mind upon all life. I am bidden to master and
proclaim whatsoever truth she has fitted me to
grasp. If I am worthy to investigate, none is
offended ; if I should be wise enough to discover
any law of nature, the entire world would ex-
press its thanks. Imagine my being assassi-
nated because I had published a complete report
upon the life and habits of the field-mouse ! "

" If one mouse published a report on the life
and habits of another, there'd be a fight all over
the field," said Georgiana.

" A ridiculous extreme," I replied. " lUit
after you have grown used to study nature with
absolute freedom and absolute peace, think how
human life repels you. You may not investi-
gate, you may not speak out, you may not even
think, you may not even feel. You are not
allowed to reveal what is concealed, and you
are required to conceal what is revealed. Nat-
ural ! Have you ever known any two men to
be perfectly natural with each other except when
they were fighting ? As for the men that I as-

228

"m'

sociate with every day, they weigh their words
out to one another as the apothecary weighs
his poisons, or the grocer his gunpowder."

"You forget," said Georgiana, "that we are
living in a very extraordinary time, when every-
body is sensitive and excited."

" It is so always and everywhere," I replied.
" You may never study life as you study nature.
With men you must take your cuoice : liberty
for your mind and a prison for your body;
liberty for your body and a prison for your
mind. Nearly all people choose the latter ; we
know what becomes of the few who do not."

But this reference to the times led us to speak
slowly and solemnly of what all men now are
speaking : war that must come between the
North and the South. We agreed that it would
come from each side as a blazing torch to Ken-
tucky, which lies between the two, and is divided
between the two in love and hate — to Kentucky,
where a soldier's life is always the ideal of a
man's duty and glory.

At last I felt that my time had come.

"Georgiana," I said, "there is one secret I
have never shared with you. It is the only fear
I have ever felt regarding our future. But, if
there should be a war — you'd better know it

229

now — leave you or not leave you, I am going
to join the army."

She grew white and faint with the thought of
a day to come. Bi-' at last she said :

" Yes; you must go."

" I know one thing," I added, after a Ions
silence ; " if I could do my whole duty as a Ken-
tuckian — as an American citizen — as a human
being— I should have to fight on both sides."

I have thus set down in a poor way a j)art of
the only talk I ever had with Georgiana on these
subjects during the year 1851.

Yesterday, about sunset, the earth and sky
were beautiful with that fulness of peace which
things often attain at the moment before thev
alter and end. The hour seemed to me the last
serene loveliness of summer, soon to be ruffled
by gales and blackened by frosts.

Gf.orgiana stood at her window looking into
the west. The shadows of the trees in my yard
fell longer and longer across the garden towards
her. Darkest among these lay the shapes of
the cedars and the pines in which the red-bird
had lived. Her whole attitude bespoke a mood
surrendered to memory ; and I felt sure that we
two were thinking of the same thing,

230

"N*]

As she approached that mystical revelation
of life which must come with our marriage,
Georgiana's gayety has grown subtly overcast.
It is as if the wild strain in her were a little sad
at having to be captured at last ; and I too ex-
periencc an indefinable pain that it has become
my lot to subdue her in this way. The thought
possesses me that she submits to marriage be-
cause she cannot live intimately with me and
lavish her love upon me in any other relation ;
and therefore I draw back with awe from the
idea of taking such possession of her as I will
and must.

As she stood at her window yesterday evening
she caught sight of me across the yard and
silently beckoned. I went over and looked up
at her, waiting and smiling.

"Well, what is it.?" I asked at length, as
her eyes rested on me with the fulness of
affection.

" Nothing. I wanted to see you standing
down there once more. Haven't you thought
of it ? This is the last time — the last of the
window, the last of the garden, the end of the
past. Everything after this will be so different.
Aren't you a little sorry that you are going to
marry me ,'' "

231

"Will you allow me to fetch the minister this
instant?"

In the evening they put on her bridal dress
and sent over for mc, and, drawing the parlour
doors aside, blinded me with the sight of her
standing in there, as if waiting in duty for love
to claim its own. As I saw her then I have but
to close my eyes to sec her now. I scarce know
why, but that vision of her haunts my mind
mysteriously.

I see a fresh snow-drift in a secret green valley
between dark mountains. The sun must travel
far and high to ich it ; but when it does, its
rays pour down nom near the zenith and are
most powerful and warm ; then in a little while
the whole valley is green again and a white mist,
rising from it, muffles the face of the sun.

Oh, Georgiana ! Georgiana ! Do not fade
away from me as I draw you to me.

My last solitary candle flickers in the socket :
it is in truth the end of the past.

232

.^3^^-' ' AST summer I foiled a
dead oak in the woods
and had the heart of
him stored away for
my winter fuel: a
series of burnt -offer-
ings to the worshipful
spirit of my hearth-
stone. There should
233

have been several of these offerings already,
for October is almost ended now, and it is
the month during which the fir^>t cool nights
come on in Kentucky and the first fires are
lighted.

A few twilights ago T stood at my yard gate
watching the red domes of the forest fade into
shadow and listening to the cawing of crows
under the low gray of the sky as they hurried
home. A chill crept over the earth. It was a
fitting hour ; I turned in-doors and summoned
Georgiana.

"We will light our first fire together," I said,
straining her to my heart.

Kneeling gayly down, we piled the wood in
the deep, wide chimney. Each of us then
brought a live coal, and together we started the
blaze. I had drawn Georgiana's chair to one
side of the fireplace, mine opposite ; and with
the candle still unlit we now sat silently watch-
ing the flame spread. What need was there of
speech .'' We understood.

By-and-by some broken wreaths of smoke
floated outward into the room. My sense
caught the fragrance. I sniffed it with a rush
of memories. Always that smell of smoke, with
other wild, clean, pungent odours of the woods,

234

Vf*

had been strangely pleasant to nie. I remem-
ber thinking of thcni when a boy as incense
perpetually and reverently set free by nature
towards the temple of the skies. I'hey aroused
in me even then the spirit of meditation on the
mystery of the world ; and later they became
inwrought with the pursuit and enjoyment of
things that had been the delight of my life for
many years. So that coming now, at the very
moment when I was dedicating niy.self to my
hearth-stone and to domestic life, this smell of
wood smoke reached me like a message from my
past. For an instant ungovernable longing
surged over me to return to il. For an instant
I did return ; and once more I lay drowsing
before my old camp-fires in th: autumn woods,
with the frosted trees draping their crimson cur-
tains around me on the walls of space and the
.stars flashing thick in the ceiling of my bed-
chamber.

My dog, who had stretched himself at my feet
before the young blaze, inhaled the smoke also
with a full breath of reminiscence, and lay
watching me out of the corner of his eye — I
fancied with reproachful constancy. I caught
his look with a sense of guilt, and glanced across
at Georgiana.

235

Her gaze was buried deep in the flames.
And iiow sweet iier fact was, how inexpressibly
at peace. She had folded lie wings of her
whole life, and sat by the hearth as still as a
brooding dove. No past laid its disturbing
touch upon her shoulder. Instead. I could see
that if there were any flight of her mind away
from the present it was into the future — a slow,
tranquil flight across the years, with all the hap-
piness that they nuist bring. As I set my own
thoughts to journey after hers, suddenly the
scene in the room changed, and I beheld (ieor-
giana as an old, old lady, with locks of silver
on her temi)les, spectacles, a tiny sock stuck
through with needles on her knee, and her face
finely wrinkled, but still blooming with uncon-
querable gaycty and youth.

" How sweet that smoke is, Gcorgiana," I
said, rousing us both, and feeling sure that she
will understand me in whatsoever figure I may
speak. " And how much we are wasting when
we change this old oak back into his elements
— smoke and light, heat and ashes. What a
magnificent work he was on natural history, re-
quiring hundreds of years for his preparation
and completion, written in a language so learned
that not the wisest can read him wisely, and

236

-»>l"»'

-ir— 1» L*- —

-Hi: ♦—• ' ■

I BEHELD UEORGIANA A> AN OLD, OLD L/U)V.

237

enduringly bound in the finest of tree calf! It
is a dishonour to speak of him as a work, lie
was a doctor of philosophy! lie should have
been a college jirofessor ! Think how he could
Vave used his own feet for a series of lectures
on the laws of equilibrium, capillary attraction,
or soils and moisture ! Was there ever a head
that knew as much as his about the action of
light ? Did any human being ever more grandly
bear the burdens of life or better face the tem-
pests of the world ? What did he not know
about birds? He had carried them in his arms
and nurtured them in his bosom for a thousand
years. Even his old coat, with all its rents and
patches — what roll of pajiyrus was ever so
crowded with the secrets of knowledge .-' The
august antiquarian! The old king! Can you
imagine a funeral urn too n(iblc for his ashes .^
But to what base uses, Georgiana ! lie will not
keep the wind away any longer; we shall change
him into a kettle of lye with which to whiten our
floors."

What Gcorgiana's reply could have been I do
not know, for at that moment Mrs. Walters
flitted in.

" I saw through the windows that you had a
fire," she said volubly, " and ran over to get

238

warm. And, oh ! yes, T wanted to tell
you — "

" Stop, />/t'asc, Mrs. Walters!" I cried, start-
ing towards her with an outstretched hand and
a warning laugh. "Von have not yet been
formally introduced to this room, and a formal
introduction is necessary. Vou must be made
acquainted with a primary law of its being;"
and as Mrs. Walters paused, dropping her
hands into her lap and regarding me with an
air of mystification, I went on :

" When I had repairs made in my house last
summer, I had this fireplace rebuilt, and I
ordered an inscription to be burnt into the
bricks. We e.vpect to ask that all our guests
will kindly notice this inscription in order to
avoid accidents or misunderstandings. So I
beg of )()u not to speak until you ha\-e read the
words over the fireplace."

Mrs. Walters wonderingly read the follow-
ing legend, running in an arch across the
chimney :

She wheeled towards me with instantaneous
triumph.

239

" I'm glad you put it there!" she cried. "I'm
glad you put it there ! It will teach them a les-
son about their talking. If there is one thing I
cannot stand it is a gossip."

I have observed that a fowl before a looking-
glass will fight its own image.

"Take care, Mrs. Walters!" I said gently.
"You came very near to violating the law just
then."

" He meant it for mc, Mrs. Walters," said
Gcorgiana, fondling our neighbour's hand, and
looking at me with an awful rebuke.

"I meant it for myself," I said. "And now
it is doing its best to make me feel like a Phari-
see. So I hasten to add that there are other
rooms in the house in which it will be allowed
human nature to assert itself in this long-estab-
lishea, hereditary, and '^eradicable right. Our
guests have only to .. .imate that they can no
longer restrain their |)ropensities and we will
conduct them to another chamber. Mrs. Moss
and I will occasionally make use of these cham-
bers ourselves, to relieve the tension of too
much virtue. But it is seriously our idea to
have one room in the house where we shall feel
safe, both as respects ourselves and as respects
others, from the discomfort of evil speaking.

240

■V*

Ah long as these walls stand or wc dwell in
them, this is to be the room of charity and
kindness to all creatures."

^•irRiWfc;

DROPPED INTO A roiflU.

Although wc exerted ourselves, conversation
flagged during the visit of Mrs. Walters. Sev-
eral times she began to speak, but, with a
R 241

frightened look at the fireplace, dropped into
a cough, or cleared her throat in a way that
called to mind the pleasing habit of Sir Roger
de Coverley in the Gardens of Gray's Inn.

Later in the evening other guests came.
Upon each the law of that fireside was lightly
yet gravely impressed. They were in the main
the few friends I know in whom such an out-
ward check would call for the least inner re-
straint ; nevertheless, on what a footing of con-
fidence it placed our conversation! To what
a commanding level we were safely lifted !
For nothing so releases the best powers of the
mind as the understanding that the entire com-
pany are under bond to keep the peace of the
finest manners and of perfect breeding.

And Georgiana — how she shone ! I knew
that she could perfectly fill a window ; I now
see that she can as easily fill a room. Our
bodies were grouped about the fireplace ; our
minds centred around her, and she flashed like
the evening star along our intellectual pathway.

The next day Mrs. Walters talked a long
time to Georgiana on the edge of the porch.

Thus my wife and I have begun life together.
I think that most of our evenings will be spent

242

in the room dedicated to a kind word for uni-
versal life. No matter how closely the warring
forces of existence, within or without, have
pressed upon us elsewhere, when we enter there
we enter peace. We shall be walled in from
all darkness of whatsoever meanings our better
selves will be the sole guests of those luminous
hours. And surely no greater good-fortune can
befall any household than to escape an ignoble
evening. 7'o attain a noble one is like lying
calmly down to sleep on a mountain-top towards
which our feet have struggled upward amid
enemies all day long.

Although we have now been two months
married, 1 have not yet captured the old
uncapturable loveliness of nature which has
always led me and still leads me on in the
person of Georgiana. I know but too well
now that I never shall. The charm in her
which I pursue, yet never overtake, is part
and parcel of that ungraspable beauty of the
world which forever foils the sense while it
sways the spirit — of that elusive, infinite splen-
dour of God which flows from afar into all ter-
restrial things, filling them as colour fills the
rose. Even while I live with Georgiana in the
closest of human relationships, she retains for

243

me the uncomprehcndcd brightness and fresh-
ness of a dream that does not end and has no
waking.

This but edges yet more sharply the eagerness
of my desire to enfold her entire self into mine.
We have been a revelation to each other, but
the revelation is not complete ; there are cur-
tains behind curtains, which one by one we
seek to lift as we penetrate more deeply into the
discoveries of our union. Sometimes she will
seek me out and, sitting beside me, put her arm
around my neck and look long into my eyes,
full of a sort of beautiful, divine wonder at what
I am, at what love is, at what it means for a
man and woman to live together as we live.
Yet, folded to me thus, she also craves a still
larger fulfilment. Often she appears to be
vainly hovering on the other side of a too solid
sphere, seeking an entrance to where I really
am. I'Aen during the intimate silences of the
night we try to reach one another through the
throbbing walls of fk\sh — we but cling together
across the lone, impassable gulfs of individual
being.

During these October nights the moon has
reached its fulness and the earth been flooded
with beauty.

244

"^"^

Our bed is placed near a window; and as the
planet sinks across the sky its rays stream
through the open shutter and fall i pon Gcor-
giana in her sleep. Sometimes I lie awake for
the sole chance of seeing them float upon her
hair, pass lingeringly across her face, and steal
holily downward along her figure. How august
she is in her purity ! the whiteness of the fairest
cloud that brushes the .silvering orb is as pitch
to the whiteness of her nature.

The other night as I lay watching her thus,
and while the lower part of the bed remained
in deep shadow, I could see that the thin cover-
ing had slipped aside, leaving Georgiana's feet
exposed.

With a start of pain I recollected an old story
about her childhood : that one day for the sake
of her rights she had received a wound in one
of her feet --how serious I had never known,
but perhaps deforming, irremediable. My head
was raised on the pillow; the moonlight was
moving down that way ; it would cross her feet ;
it would reveal the truth.

I turned my face away and closed my eyes.

245

nearly chirk when I reiich home
roni town these Janiuiry evcn-
n<^s. However the cold may stinij
the face and dart inward to the
marrow, Geor<;iana is waitin<^ at
le yard gate to meet me, so
ooded and shawled and ringed
about with petticoats — like a tree
within its layers of bark — that
she looks like the most thick-
set of ordinary-sized women ;
for there is a heavenly but
246

very human secret hidin- in this household
now, and she is thou<ihttully keeping- it.

We press our half-frozen checks together, as
red as wine-sap apples, and grope for each
other's hand throng, h our big l.nnl s-wool mit-
tens, and warm our hit, with the laughter in
each other's eyes. (>we evening >he feigned to
be mounted on guard, pacing to and fro inside
the gate, ag.iuist which rested an enormous
icicle. When I started to enter s',.. seized
the icicle, presented arms, and demanded the
countersign.

"Love, captain," I said. " If it be not that,
slay me at your feet ! "

She threw away her great white spear and
put her arms around my neck.

"It is ' Peace,'" she said. " lUit I desert to
the enemy."

Without going to my fireside that evening I
hurr'ed on to the stable; for I do not relin-
quish to my servants the office of feeding my
stock.

Believe in the divine rights of kings I never
shall, except in the divine right to be kingly
men, which all men share ; but truly a divine
right lies for any man in the ownership of a
comfortable barn in winter. It is the feudal

247

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castle of the farm to the lower animals, who
dwell in tnc Dark Ages of their kind — dwell
on and on in affection, submission, and trust,
while their lord demands of them their labour,
their sustenance, their life.

Of a winter's day, when these poor serfs have
been scattered over the portionless earth, how
often they look towards this fortress and lift up
their voices with cries for night to come; the
horses, ruffled and shivering, with their tails to
the wind, as they snap their frosted fodder, or
paw through the rime to the frozen grass under-
neath, causing their icy fetlocks to rattle about
their hoofs ; the cattle, crowded to leeward of
some deep-buried haystack, the exposed side of
the outermost of them white with whirling flakes ;
the sheep, turning their pitiful, trusting eyes
about them over the fields of storm in earth and
sky.

What joy at nightfall to gather them home to
food and warmth and rest ! If there is ever a
time when I feel myself a mediaeval lord to trusty
vassals, it is then. Of a truth I pass entirely
over the Middle Ages, joining my life to the
most ancient dwellers of the plains, and becom-
ing a simple father of flocks and herds. When
they have been duly stabled according to their

248

kinds, I climb to the crib in the barn and create
a great landsHde of the fat ears that is like
laughter; and then from every stall what a
hearty, healthy chorus of cries and petitions
responds to that laughter of the corn ! What
squeals and grunts persuasive beyond the realms
of rhetoric ! What a blowing of mellow horns
from the cows ! And the quick nostril trumpet-
call of the horse, how eager, how dependent, yet
how commanding ! As I mount to the top of
the pile, if I ever feel myself a royal personage
it is then ; I ascend my throne ; I am king of
the corn ; and there is not a brute or peasant in
my domain that does not worship me as ruler of
heaven and earth.

Or I love to catch up the bundles of oats as
they are thrown down from the loft and send
them whirling through the cutting-box so fast
that they pour into the big baskets like streams
of melted gold; or, grasping my pitchfork, I
stuff the icks over the mangers with "' rich
aromatic hay until I am as warm as when I
loaded the wagons with it at midsummer noons.
With what sweet sounds and odours now the
whole barn is filled! Iiow robust, c'ean, well-
meaning are my thoughts ! In what comfort of
mind I can turn to my own roof and store !

249

This hour in my stable is the only one out of
the twenty-four left to me in which my feet may
cross the boundary of human life into the world
of the other creatures ; for I have gone into
business in town ic gratify Georgiana. I think
little enough of this business otherwise. Every
day I pass through the ^roove of it with no more
intellectual satisfaction in it than I feel an intel-
lectual satisfaction in passing my legs through
my pantaloons of a morning. But a man can
study nothing in nature that does not outreach
his powers.

If time is left after feeding, I veer off from
the barn to the wood-pile, for I love to wield an
axe, besides having a taste to cut my own wood
for the nightly burning. This evening I could
but stop to notice how the turkeys in the tree-
tops looked like enormous black nutgalls on the
limbs, except that the wind whisked their tails
about as cheerily as though they were already
hearth-brooms.

It is well for my poor turkeys that their tails
contain no moisture ; for on a night like this
they would freeze stiif, and the I'^ast incautious
movement of a fowl in the morning would serve
to crack its tail off — up to the pope's nose.

As I set my foot on the door-step, I went

250

back to see whether the two snow-birds were
in their nightly places under the roof of the
porch — the guardian spirits of our portal.
There they were, wedged each into a snug
corner as tightly as possible, so not to break
their feathers, and leaving but one side exposed.
Happening to have some wheat in my pocket,
I pitched the grains up to the projecting ledge ;
they can take their breakfast in bed when they
wake in the morning. Little philosophers of
the frost, who even in their overcoats combine
the dark side and the white side of life into
a wise and weathering gray — the no less fit
external for a man.

The thought of them to-night put me strongly
in mind of a former habit of mine to walk under
the cedar-trees at such dark winter twilights
and listen to the low calls of the birds as they
gathered in and settled down. I have no time
for such pleasant ways now ; they have been
given up along with my other studies.

This winter of 185 1 and 1852 has been cold
beyond the memory of man in Kentucky — the
memory of the white man, which goes back
some three-quarters of a century. Twice the
Ohio River has been frozen over, a sight he had
never seen. The thermometer has fallen to

251

thirty degrees below zero. Unheard-of snows
have blocked the two or three railroads we have
in the State. News comes that people are walk-
ing over the ice on ICast River, New York, and
that the Mississippi at Memphis bears the
weight of a man a hundred yards from the
bank.

Behind this winter lay last year's spring of
rigours hitherto unknown, destroying orchards,
vineyards, countless tender trees and plants.
It set everybody to talking of the year 1834,
when such a frost fell that to this day it is
known as Black Friday in Kentucky; and it
gave rne occasion to tell Gcorgiana a story my
grandfather had told mc, of how one night in
the wilderness the weather grew so terrible that
the wild beasts came out of the forests to shel-
ter themselves around the cabins of the pioneers,
and how he was awakened by them fighting and
crowding for places against the warm walls and
chimney-corners. If he had but opened his
door and crept back into bed, he might soon
have had a buffalo on one side of his fireplace
and a bear on the other, with a wild-cat asleep
on the hearth between, and with the thin-skinned
deer left shivering outside as truly as if they
had all been human bein<rs.

252

Such a spring, with its destruction of seed-
bearing and nut-bearing vegetation, followed
by a winter that seals under ice what may have
been produced, has spread starvation among
the wild creatures. A recent Sunday after-
noon walk in the woods — Georgiana being
■away from home with her mother — showed
me that part of the earth's surface rolled out
as a vast white chart, on which were traced the
desperate travels of the snow-walkers in search
of food. Squirrel, chipmunk, rabbit, weazel,
mouse, mink, fox — their tracks crossed and
recrossed, wound in and out and round and
round, making an intricate lace-work beautitul
and pitiful to behold. Crow-prints ringed every
corn-shuck in the field. At the base of one
I picked up a frozen dove— starved at the brink
of plenty. Rabbit tracks grew thickest as I
entered my turnip and cabbage patches, con-
verging towards my house, and coming to a
focus at a group of snow-covered pyramids, in
which last autumn, as usual, I buried my vege-
tables. I told Georgiana :

" They are attracted by the leaves that Dilsy
throws away when she gets out what we need.
Think of it — a whole neighbourhood of rabbits
hurrying here after dark for the chance of a

253

bare nibble at a possible leaf." Once that
night I turned in bed, restless. Georgiana did
the same.

" Are you awake ? " she said softly.

" Are you ? "

" Are you thinking about the rabbits ? "

" Are you ? "

"What do you suppose they think about
us ? "

" I'd rather not know."

Georgiana tells me that the birds in unusual
numbers are wintering among the trees, driven
to us with the boldness of despair. God and
nature have forgotten them ; they have nothing
to choose between but death and man. She
has taken my place as their almoner and nightly
renders me an account of what she has done.
This winter gives her a great chance and she
adorns it. It seems that never before were so
many red-birds in the cedars ; and although one
subject is never mentioned between us, uncon-
sciously she dwells upon these in her talk, and
plainly favours them in her affection for the
sake of the past. There are many stories I
could relate to show how simple and beautiful
is this whole aspect of her nature.

254

A little thing happened to-night.

Towards ten o'clock she brought my hat,
overcoat, overshoes, mittens, comforter.

" Put them on," she said mysteriously.

She also got ready, separating herself from
me by so many clothes that I could almost have
felt myself entitled to a divorce.

It was like day out-of-doors with the moon
shining on the snow. We crept towards the
garden, screened behind out-buildings. When
we reached the fence, we looked through
towa-Js the white pyramids. All that part of
the ground was alive with rabbits. Georgiana
had spread for them a banquet of Lucullus, a
Belbhazzar's feast. It had been done to please
me, I knew, and out of a certain playfulness of
her own ; but there are other charities of hers,
which she thinks known only to herself, that
show as well the divine drift of her thought-
fulness

She is asleep now — for the sake of the
Secret. After she had gone to bed, what with
the spectacle of the rabbits and what with our
talk beforehand of the many cardinals in the
cedars, ray thoughts began to run freshly on
old subjects, and, unlocking my bureau, I got
out my notes and drawings for the work on

255

Kentucky birds. Georgiana does not know
that they exist; she never shall. With what
authority those studies call me still, as with
a trumpet from the skies! and I know that
trumpet will sound on till my ears are past
hearing. Sometimes I look upon myself as a
man who has had two hearts; one lies buried
in the woods, and the other sits at the fire-
side thinking of it. But sleep on, Georgiana
— mothe- that is to be. The dreams of your
life shall never be disturbed by the old dreams
of mine.

256

^HE population of this
town on yesterday was
seven thousand nine
hundred and twenty ;
to-day it is seven thou-
sand nine hundred and
twenty -^//r. The in-
habitants of the globe are enriched by the
same stupendous unit; the solar system must
adjust itself to new laws of equilibrium; the
choir of angels is sweetened by the advent of
another musician. During the night Georgiana
s 257

bore a son — not during the night, but at dawn,
amid such singing of birds that every tree in the
yard became a dew-hung belfry of chimes, ring-
ing a welcome to the heir of this old house and
of these old trees — to the dispenser of seed
during winters to come — to the proprietor of a
whole race of sced-scatterers as long as nature
shall be harsh and seasons shall return.

I had already bought the largest fa,mi!y Bible
in town as a repository for his name, Adam
Col)b Moss, which in clear euphony is most
fit to be enrolled among the sweetly sounding
vocables of the Hebrew children. The page for
the registration of later births in my family is
so large and the lines ruled across it are so
many that I am deeply mortified over this soli-
tary entry at the top. But surely Georgiana
and I would have to live far past the ages of
Abraham and Sarah to fill it with the requisite
wealth of offspring, beginning as we do, and be-
ing without divine assistance. When the name
of our eldest-born is inscribed in this Bible, not
far away will be found a scene in the home of
his first parents, Georgiana and I being only
the last of these, and giving, as it were, merely
the finishing Kentucky touch to his Jewish
origin.

258

But I gambol in spirit like a ha\vi< in the air.
Let mo hood myself with i)arental cares; I have
been a sire lor hall" a day.

I am speechless before the stupendous wisdom
of my son in view of his stupendous i-norance.
Already he lectures to the old people about the
house on the perfect conduct of life, and the
only preparation that he requires for his lectures
is a lew drops of milk. By means of these, and
without any knowledge of anatomy, he will show
us, for instance, what it is to be master of the
science of vital functions. When, he regards it
necessary to do anything, he does it instantly
and perfectly, and the world may take the conse-
quences and the result. He forthwith addresses
himself to fresh comfort and new enterprises
for self-development. Beyond what is vital he
refuses to go; things that do not concern him
he lets alone. He has no cares beyond his
needs ; all space to him is what he can fill, all
time his instant of action. He does not know
where he came from, what he is, why here,
whither bound ; nor does he ask.

My heart aches helplessly for him when he
shall have become a man and have grown less
wise : when he shall find it necessary to act for

259

himself and shall yet be troubled by what his
companions may think; when he shall no longer
live within the fortress of the vital, but take up
his wandering abode with the husks and swine;
when he shall no longer let the world pass by
him with heed only as there is need, but weary
himself tc better the unchangeable ; when space
shall not be some quiet nook of the world large
enough for the cradle of his life, but the illimit-
able void filled with floating spheres, out upon
the myriads of which, with his poor, puzzled
eyes, he will pitifully gaze ; when time shall not
be his instant of action, but two eternities, past
and future, along the baffli.ig walls of which he
will lead his groping faith ; and when the ques-
tioning of his stoutest years sha'' Se : Whence
came I ? And what am I ? Why here for a
little while ? Where to be hereafter ? A swim-
mer is drowned by a wave originating in the
moon ; a traveller is struck down by a bolt
originating in a cloud ; a workman is overcome
by the heat originating in the sun; and so,
perhaps, the end will come to him through his
solitary struggle with the groat powers of the
.miverse that perpetually reach him, but remain
forever beyond his reach. If I could put forth
one protecting prayer that would cover all his

260

years, it would be that through life he continue
as wise as the day he was born.

The third of June once more. Rain fell all
yesterday, all last night. This morning earth
and sky are dark and chill. The plants are
bowed down, and no wind releases them from
their burden of large white drops. Aboui the
yard the red-rose bushes fall away from the
fences, the lilacs stand with their purple cki.s-
ters hanging down as heavily as clusters of
purple grapes. I hear the young orioles calling
drearily from wet nests under drij^ping boughs.
A plaintive piping of lost little chickens comes
from the long gr-^^s.

How unlike the day is to the third of June
two years ago. I was in the strawberry bed
that crystalline morning ; Georgiana came to the
window, and I beheld her for the first time.
How unlike the same day one year back. Again
I was in the strawberry bed, again Georgiana
came to the window and spoke to me as before.
This morning as I tipped into her room where
she lay in her bed, she turned her face to me
on the pillow, and for the third time she said,
fondly :

" Are you the gardener } "

261

The sky being so blanketed with cloud,
although tile shutters were open, only a faint
gray light filled the room. It was the first day
that she had been well enough to have it done ;
but now the bed in which Georgiana lay was
spread with the most beautiful L^raperics of
white ; the pillows were rich with needle-work
and lace, and for the first time she had put on
the badge of her new dignity, a little white cap
of ribbons and lace, the long wide streamers of
which, edged with lace, lay out upon the coun-
terpane like bands of the most delicate frost.
The fingers of one hand rested lightly on the
child beside her, as though she were counting
the pulse of its oncoming life. Out in the yard
the lilies of the valley, slipping out of their cool
sheaths of green leaves, were not more white,
more fresh. And surely Georgiana's gayety is
the unconquerable gayety of the world, the
youthfulness of immortal youth.

I went over to her with the strange new awe
I feel at my union with the young mother, where
hitherto there has but been a union with the
woman I love. She stretched out her hands to
me, almost hidden under the lace of her sleeves,
and drew my face down against hers, as she
said in my ear —

262

" Now you are the old Adam ! "

When she released me, she bent over the
child and added, reproachfully —

"You haven't paid the least attention to the
baby."

" I haven't noticed that the baby has bestowed
the least attention upon me. He is the youngest."

"He is the gue-t of the house! It is your
duty to speak to him first."

" He doesn't act like a guest in my house.
He behaves as though he owned it. I'm nobody
since he arrived — not even his body-servant."

Georgiana, who was still bending over the
child, glanced up with a look of confidential,
whimsical distress.

" How could anything so old be born so
young ! "

"He will look younger as he gets older," I
replied. " And he will not be the first bachelor
to do that. At present this youngster is an
invaluable human document in too large an
envelope: that's all."

Georgiana, with a swift, protecting movement,
leaned nearer to the child, and spoke to him :

" It's your house ; tell him to leave the room
for his impertinence."

"He may have the house, since it's his," I

263

replied. " But there is one thing I'll not stand ;
if he ever comes between me and you, he'll have
to go; I'll present him to Mrs. Walters."

I was net aware of the expression with which
I stood looking down upon my son, but Georgi-
ana must have noticed it.

"And what if he supplants me some day.?"
she asked, suddenly serious, and with an old
fear reviving.

"Oh, Georgiana!" I cried, kneeling by the
bedside and putting my arms around her, " vou
know that as long as we are in this world I am
your lover."

"No longer.?" she whispered, drawing me
closer.

" Forever ! "

By-and-by I went out to the strawberry bed.
The season was too backw;ird. Not one was
turning. With bitter disappointment I searched
the cold, wet leaves, bending them apart for the
sight of as much as one scarlet lobe, that I might
take it in to her if only for remembrance of the
day. At last I gathered a few perfect leaves
and blossoms, and presented them to her in
silence on a plate with a waiter and napkin.

She rewarded me with a laugh, and lifted from
the plate a spray of blossoms.

264

" They will be ripe by the time I -im well,"
she said, the sunlight of memory coming out
upon her face. Then having touched the wet
blossoms with her finger-tips, she dropped them
quickly back into the plate.

•' How cold they are ! " she said, as a shiver
ran through her. At the same time she looked
quickly at me, her eyes grown dark with dread.

I .set the plate hastily down, and she pu<- her
hands in mine to warm them.

265

VII

MONTH has gone
by since Georgiana
passed away.

To-day, for the
first time, I went
back to the woods.
It was pleasant to
be surrounded again by the ever-living earth
that feels no loss and has no memory ; that was
sere yesterday, is green to-day, will be sere again
to-morrow, then green once more ; that pauses
not for wounds and wrecks, nor lingers over
death and change; but onward, ever onward,
along the groove of law, passes from its red
origin in universal flame to its white end in uni-
versal snow.

266

And yet, as I approached the edge of the
forest, it was as though an invisible company
of influences came gently forth to meet me and
sought to draw me back into their old friend-
ship. I found myself stroking the trunks of
the trees as I would throw my arm around the
shoulders of a tried comrade ; I drew down the
branches and plunged my face into the new
leaves as into a tonic stream.

Yesterday a wind storm swept this neighbour-
hood. Later, deep in the woods, I came upon
an elm that had been struck by a bolt at the
top. Nearly half the trunk had been torn away ;
and one huge limb lay across my path.

As I stood looking at it, the single note of a
bird fell on my ear — always the same note, low,
quiet, regular, devoid of feeling, as though the
bird had been stunned and were trying to say :
lV/u7t can / do ? What can I do ? What can I
do?

I knew what that note meant. It was the
note with which a bird now and then lingers
around the scene of the central tragedy of its
life.

After a long search I found the nest, crushed
against the ground under the huge linb, and a
few feet from it, in the act of trying to escape,

267

the male. The female, sitting meantime on the
end of a bough near by, watched me incuri-
ously, and with no change in that quiet, regular,
careless note — she knew only too well that he
was past my harming. The plan of their life
had reached an end in early summer.

I sat down near by for a while, thinking of
the universal tragedy of the nest.

It was the second time to-day that this di-
vine wastage in nature had forced itself on my
thought, and this morning the spectacle was on
a scale of tragic greatness beyond anything that
has ever touched human life in this part of the
country: Mr. Clay was buried an id the Ion-
sad blare of music, the tolling of bells, the roll
of drums, the boom of cannon, and the grief of
thousands upon thousands upon thousands of
people — a vast and solemn pageant, yet as
nothing to the multitudes that will attend afar.
For him this day the flags of nations will fly
half-mast ; and the truly great men of the world,
wherever the tidings may reach them of his
passing, will stand awe-stricken that one of
their superhuman company has been too soon
withdrawn.

Too soon withdrawn ! Therein is the tragedy
of the nest, the wastage of the strong, the law

268

of loss, whose reic^n on earth is unending, but
whose right to reign no creature, brute or human,
ever acknowledges.

The death of Mr. Clay is one of the many
things that are happening to change all that
m de up my life with Georgiana. She was a
true hero-worshipper, and she worshipped him.
I no less. Now that he is dead. I feel as much
lonelier as a soldier feels whose chosen tent-
mate and whose general have fallen on the field
together.

As I turned away from the overcrowded town
this afternoon towards the woods and was con-
fronted by the wreck of the storm, my thoughts
being yet full of Mr. Clay, of his enemies and
disappointment, there rose before my mind a
scene such as Audubon may once have wit-
nessed :

The light of day is dying over the forests
of the upper Mississippi. The silence of high
space falls upon the vast stream. On a thun
der-blasted tree-top near the western bank sits
a lone, stern figure waiting for its lordliest prey
— the eagle waiting for the swan. Long the still-
ness continues among the rocks, the tree-tops,
and above the river. But far away in the north
a white shape is floating nearer. At last it

269

comes into sight, flying heavily, for it is already
weary, being already wounded. The next mo-
ment the cry of its coming is heard echoing
onward and downward upon the silent woods.
Instantly the mighty watcher on the summit is
alert and tense ; and as the great snowy image
of the swan Hoats by, in mid-air and midway of
the broad expanse of water, he meets it. No
battle is fought up there — the two are not well
matched; and thus, separated from all that is
little and struggling far above all that is low,
with the daylight dying on his spotlessness, the
swan received the blow in its heart.
So came Death to the great Commoner.

Oh, Georgiana ! I do not think of Death as
ever having come to you. I think of you as
some strangely beautiful white being that one
day rose out of these earthly marshes where
hunts the dark Fowler, and uttering your note
of divine farewell, spread your wings towards
the open sea of eternity, there to wait my com-
ing.

^■^

VIII

^ f'T is a year and four months
since Georgiana left me,

and now everything goes
on much as it did before
she came. The family have
moved back to their home
in Henderson, returning like
-;^,.,„. V, a little company of travellers
who have lost their guide.
Sylvia has already married ; her brother writes
me that he is soor to be ; the mother visits
me and my child, yearningly, but seldom, on
account of her delicate health ; and thus our

271

lives grow always more apart. No one takes
their place, the house having passed to people
with whom, beyond all neighbourly civilities,
I have naught to do. Nowadays as I stroll
around my garden with my little boy in my
arms, strange faces look down upon us out of
Georgiana's window.

And I have long since gone back to Nature.
When the harvest has been gathered from our
strong, true land, a growth comes on which late
in the year causes the earth to regain some-
what of its old greenness. New blades spring
up in the stubble of the wheat ; the beeless
clover runs and blossoms ; far and wide over
the meadows flow the tufted billows of the
grass ; and in the woods the oak-tree drops the
purple and brown of his leaf and mast upon the
verdure of June. Everywhere a second spring
puts forth between summer gone and winter
ncaring. It is the overflow of plenty beyond
the filling of the barns. It is a wave of life
following quickly upon the one that broke
bountifully at our feet. It is nature's refusal
to be once reaped and so to end.

The math : then the aftermath.

Upon the Kentucky landscape during these
October days there lies this later youth of the

272

year, calm, deep. v,>>-ous. And as I spend
much time in it for the fine, fresh work it brings
to hand and thought, I feel that in my way I
am part of it. that I can match the aftermath
of nature with the aftermath of my life The
Harvest passed over my fields, leaving them
bare; they are green again up to the Amter's
edge.

The thought has now come into my mind
that I shall lay aside these pages for my son
to ponder if he should ever grow old enough
to value what he reads. They will give him
some account of how his father and mother
met m the old time, of their courting days, of
their happy life together. And since it becomes
more probable that there will be a war, and
that I might not be living to speak to him of
his mother in ways not written here, I shall set
down one thing about her which I pray he may
take well to heart. He ought to know and to
remember this ; that his life was the price of
hers ; she was extinguished that he might shine
and he owes it to her that the flame of his torch
be as white as the altar's from which it was
Kmdied.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing, then, in
the character of his mother- which, please God
T 273

he will have, or, getting all things else, he can
never be a gentleman —was honour. It shone
from her countenance, it ran like melody in her
voice, it made her eyes the most beautiful in
expression that I have ever seen, it enveloped
her person and demeanour with spiritual grace.
Honour in what are called the little things of
life, honour not as women commonly understand
it, but as the best of men understand it — that
his mother had. It was the crystalline, unshak-
able rock upon which the somewhat fragile and
never to be completed structure oi her life was
reared.

If he be anything of a philosopher, he may
reason that this trait must have made his mother
too serious and too hard. Let him think again.
It was the very core of soundness in her that
kept her gay and sweet. I have often likened
her mind to the sky in its power of changeable-
ness from radiant joyousness to sober calm ; but
oftenest it was like the vault of April, whose
drops quicken what they fall upon ; and she was
of a soft-heartedness that ruled her absolutely
— but only to the unyielding edge of honour.
Yet she did not escape this charge of being both
hard and serious upon the part of men and
women who were used to the laxness of small

274

misdemeanours, and felt ill at ease before the
terrifying truth that she was a lady.

Beyond this single trait of hers — which, if
it please God that he inherit it, may he keep
though he lose everything else — I set nothing
further down for his remembrance, since naught
could come of my writing. By words I could no
more give him an idea of what his mother was
than I could point him to a few measures of
wheat and bid him behold a living harvest.

Upon these fields of cool October greenness
there rises out of the earth a low, sturdy weed.
Upon the top of this weed small white blossoms
open as still as stars of frost. Upon these blos-
soms Hes a fragrance so pure and wholesome
that the searching sense is never cloyed, never
satisfied. Years after the blossoms are dried
and yellow and the leaves withered and gone,
this wholesome fragrance lasts. The common
people, who often put their hopes into their
names, call it life-everlasting. Sometimes they
make themselves pillows of it for its virtue of
bringing a quiet sleep.

This plant is blooming out now, and nightly
as I wend homeward I pluck a handful of it,
gathering along with its life the tranquil sun-

275

shine, the autumnal notes of the cardinal passing
to better lands, and all the healthful influences
of the fields. I shall make me a tribute of it to
the memory of her undying sweetness.

If God wills, when I fall asleep for good I
shall lay my head beside hers on the bosom of
the Life Everlasting.

THE END

276