LIBRARY DIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS ,-p PRISMATICS BY RICHARD HAYWARDE Illustrated WITH WOOD ENGEAVINGS FROM DESIGNS BY ELLIOTT DARLEY KENSETT HICKS AND ROSSITER " And if it be a mistake, it is only so; there is no heresy in such harmless aberrations." JOSEPH GRANVILJ,E. SECOND EDITION NEW YORK D APPLETON & COMPANY 200 BROADWAY AND 1G LITTLE BRITAIN LONDON MDCCCLIV LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNU DAVIS LIBRARY ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by D. APPLETON & COMPANY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. TO MY BROTHER DAVENPORT. is look AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED, PREFACE. A PREFACE is a happy medium between the author and the public. It is usually apologetic too, and therefore modest like a veil ; I will not say how transparent. GENTLE READER, I do not pretend to exhibit truth, clear and pellucid, but rather, as the title indicates, tinctured with imperfections. Life is many-hued, " Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity." The purest are not immaculate ; the impure, though double- dyed with guilt, have some tinge of humanity some obscured indi cation of divine origin ; we are all more or less prismatic. If there be one earnest, honest purpose beneath the strata of 6 PREFACE. superficial society in this country, it is the desire to ameliorate the condition of two classes the rich and the poor. Perhaps the reader will discover some hints tending toward this vital subject, in the volume before him. If so I am rewarded. What if I fail ? Other minds, more comprehensive, will succeed. Servile prejudices, political and conventional, are gaining ground in our larger cities. Young America does not promise to represent the noble estate purchased for him by the blood of the Revolution. Instead of that sense of independence which befits the spirit of his age and race ; instead of cultivating what is manly and dignified ; instead of making himself familiar with letters and the arts ; and the political history of this, the greatest of republics ; he is daily becoming more emasculate ; less fitted to bear a part either as citi zen, merchant, or legislator. This is not said or meant unkindly ; it is not a satire levelled at a particular class ; the subject is too serious ; at once too high, and too low for ridicule. But is it not true ? Is there not something better worth the attention of young men about town than acquiring a taste for petty bijouteries ; extravagance, and the means of gratifying it ; parading, like lackeys in the cast-off habits of men of fashion, gaining from the society of the gentler sex not even the forms of polite courtesy, and indulging in a vocabulary of slang phrases, which indicate any thing but the man of refinement, of education; in fact, the gentleman? As to the other class, for whom, happily here, the portals of uni versal education stand wide open, there is greater hope ; thank PREFACE. 7 Heaven, among these exists a spirit more national ; loftier in its as pirations, than that which obtains among their denationalized co- temporaries. I will endeavour to illustrate with a /HUB. A diamond fell among the grass, and when the morning came, behold ! around it innumerable dew-drops, sparkling with iridescent light. Then scornfully it spake, being touched with envy, and said, " Vainly ye glitter and please the eye of the beholder, while I lie here unnoticed ; a brief hour, and ye will vanish from the earth, but ages shall roll over me without diminishing my lustre." Then a low voice arose from the starry multitude : " Unhappy one ! ad mired as thou art, wouldst thou still disparage the lowly and the unoffending ? Dost thou not grace the crown of the monarch and stud the sceptre of empire ? Dost thou not encircle the white arms of queens, and repose upon the bosom of haughty loveliness ? Yet, not content with thy lofty station, thou desirest to show thy contempt of those who have injured not thee. Know then, since thou hast sought it, the difference between us. Thou art brought forth with stripes and the unrequited labor of the slave ; we descend from heaven that the children of men may have respite and sustenance. Thou art the minister of crime, of cruel war, and oppression ; but prosperity and peace are the followers of our footsteps. Where thou art is pride, envy, and covetousness. Where we are, the voice of thankfulness arises from universal nature. Whether in the mine 8 PREFACE. or in the casket tliou art of the earth ; but we dwell in the glorious pavilion of the sun, and build the tinted arch of the rainbow." Then the breath of the morning came, and the dew-drops were exhaled to heaven, but the share of the peasant turned the clods upon the diamond, and he trod it under foot, and passed on. So much for the pervading hue of prismatics ; there are others less evident ; some of which let me explain. Americans are said to be the most thin-skinned people in the world : by way of a test, the articles on the habits of Irishmen and Scotchmen were written. I hope the motive will not be misunder stood ; I could not afford to lose one of the many I claim a* friends who represent either nation, by any ill-timed levity, that might be misinterpreted. But if by chance I do manage to ex cite a little of that feeling in others which is said to be peculiar to my own countrymen, I may, emboldened by success, publish a geo graphy, with the habits of Englishmen, Frenchmen, etc., enriched with illustrations. I was informed, some years after the story of the " Last Picture " had been published in the Knickerbocker Magazine, that it, or some thing like it, was to be found in " The Disowned," by Bulwer, a novel I have never read. Still I concluded to republish it, as it was told me, by an old lady, when I was a boy. She came from Cum berland, in the north of England ; she had seen the picture and there is no doubt of the story being authentic. I would be wanting in gratitude if I neglected to acknowledge PREFACE. 9 my obligations to those artists, my friends, who have so beautifully illustrated this volume. It was a voluntary offer on their part ; but for their suggestions it might, perhaps, never have been printed. In conclusion, I trust, these essays, which have afforded me so much enjoyment and employment in long winter evenings, when other duties were finished, will not be entirely disregarded ; not for my sake, but for the sake of all who feel, and all who need sym pathy. CHESTNUT COTTAGE, March 5, 1853. CONTENTS. PAGE THE LAST PICTURE, . . . . .13 THE BEATING OF THE HEART, .... 21 AUNT MIRANDA, . . . . . . .25 HETABEL, ....... 53 ORANGE BLOSSOMS, . . . . . .57 BUNKER HILL : AN OLD-TIME BALLAD, ... 89 A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON, . . .95 THE SEASONS, . . . . . . .117 OLD BOOKS, . . . . . . .121 A BABYLONISH DITTY, ...... 133 THE FIRST OYSTER-EATER, . . . . .137 AN EVENING RE VERY, . . . .147 ON THE HABITS OF IRISHMEN, . . . . .151 LA BELLA ENTRISTECIDA, . . . . . 157 ON THE HABITS OF SCOTCHMEN, . . . . .161 12 CONTENTS. PAGE THE LOCKET: AX ANCIENT BALLAD, . . . .171 Ox SOCIETIES FOR AMELIORATING THE CONDITION OF THE Kicn, 175 WHERE is THE HOLY TEMPLE? . . . .183 ALLITERATION, . . . . . . .185 ALBUM VERSES, ...... 197 THE LAY-FIGURE, . . . . . .201 To , 205 MY BOY ix THE COUNTRY, ..... 207 A SONNET, . 208 WIT AND HUMOR, ..... 209 THE LAST PICTURE. " The spider's most attenuated thread Is cord, is cable, when compared with that On which, at times, man's destiny depends." loveliest thing in life," says a gifted author, "is the mind of a young child." The most sensitive thing, he might have added, is the heart of a young- artist. Hiding in his bosom a veiled and unspeakable beauty, the inspired Neophyte shrinks from contact with the actual, to lose himself in delicious reveries of an ideal world. In those enchanted regions, the great and power ful of the earth ; the warrior-statesmen of the Elizabethan era ; the steel-clad warriors of the mediaeval ages ; gorgeous cathedrals, and the luxuriant pomp of prelates, who had princes for their vassals ; courts of fabled and forgotten kings ; and in the deepening gloom of antiquity, the nude 14 THE LAST PICTURE. Briton and the painted Pict pass before his enraptured eyes. Women, beautiful creations ! warm with breathing life, yet spiritual as angels, hover around him ; Elysian landscapes are in the distance ; but ever arresting his steps, cold and spectral in his path, stretches forth the rude hand of Keality. Is it surprising that the petty miseries of life weigh down his spirit ? . Yet the trembling magnet does not seek the north with more unerring fidelity than that "soft sentient thing," the artist's heart, still directs itself amid every calamity, and in every situation, to wards its cynosure perfection of the beautiful. The law which guides the planets attracts the one ; the other is influenced by the Divine mystery which called the universe itself into being ; that sole attribute of genius creation. Few artists escape those minor evils which are almost a necessary consequence in an exquisitely sympathetic or ganization. Fortunately, these are but transient, often requisite, bringing forth hidden faculties and deeper feel ings, which else might have lain dormant. But iterated disappointments will wear even into a soul of iron ; sadlj* I write it, there have been such instances; but a few years have elapsed since the death of the lamented Haydon ; and later, one nearer and dearer, this side the Atlantic, was called to an untimely grave. THE LAST PICTURE. 15 Not less true and touching is the tale I have to tell, although it relates to an earlier period ; " its only charm, in sooth, If any, will be sad and simple truth." In one of those little villages in the north of England which still preserve the antiquated customs and pastimes of past times, there lived, about a century ago, a young- artist by the name of Stanfield. A small freehold estate barely sufficed to support himself and his aged grandmo ther. They resided in a cottage entirely by themselves, and as he was an orphan and an only child, I need not say how dear he was to that poor old heart. The border bal lads she would sit crooning to him long winter nights had been as eloquent to him as a mythology, and many a " Douglass and Percie," many an exploit of " Jonnie Arm strong," " Laidlaw," and " Elliott/' adorned the walls of the cottage, depicted, it is true, with rude materials and imple ments, but sufficiently striking to excite the admiration of the villagers, who wondered, not so much at the man ner in which the sketches were executed, as at the fact that such things could be done at all. A beautiful rural landscape surrounded their home ; and a view of the Solway, the Irish sea, and the distant coast of Scotland, 16 THE LAST PICTURE. doubtless had its effect upon the mind of the young painter. Many were the gossipings, during his absence from the cottage, over these early productions of his pencil, and dear to his aged grandmother the rude praises bestowed upon them by her rustic neighbors. At last the Squire called upon him. The meeting was delightful to both. The enthusiasm and innate refinement of the young man the delicate taste, simplicity, and man ly benevolence of the Squire, were mutually attractive. A commission to paint a picture was given to Stanfield, and a large apartment in the Manor Hall appropriated to his use. You may be sure he was untiring in his efforts now. Koorn to paint materials to use studies on every side patronage to reward happy artist ! Nor was the want of sweet companionship felt by him. At times, a lovely face startled him at his doorway. Sometimes music, " both of instrument and singing," floated up the broad staircase. Sometimes he found a chance handful of flow ers resting upon his palette. A golden-haired, blue-eyed vision haunted his dreams, waMng or sleeping. Happy, happy artist ! The Squire had an only daughter. Her name was Blanche. The picture was at last completed. It happened the great Sir Joshua Keynolds at this time paid the Squire a visit. Ah ! that young heart throbbed THE LAST PICTURE. 17 then, not less with dread than joy. No doubt it was a crude production, that picture, but youth, with all its misgivings, is full of hope, and the young artist, in spite of the wise admonitions of his patron, insisted upon con cealing himself behind the canvas, that he might hear the candid opinion of the great painter. It is scarcely neces sary to refer to the fact, that Sir Joshua was deaf, and his voice in consequence, had that sharpness usual in persons so affected. The expected day arrived. The Squire and his guests stood before the picture. A sweet voice, like a thread of gold, sometimes mingled with the praises of the rest. At last, Sir Joshua spoke. Stanfield listened intent ly. He heard his picture condemned. Still he listened, his heart beating against his side almost audibly ; there might be some redeeming points ? Like an inexorable judge, the old painter heaped objection upon objection, and that too, in tones, it seemed, of peculiar asperity. Poor Stanfield felt as if the icy hand of death were laid upon his heart, and then, with a sickening shudder, fell senseless upon the floor. They raised him, he recovered was restored to life ; but what was life to him ? From that time, he drooped daily. At last his kind patron sent him to Kome. There, amid the eternal mon- 18 THE LAST PICTURE. uments of art, avoiding all companions, immured in his little studio, he busied himself steadily, but feebly, with a work which proved to be his last. It represented a precipitous cliff to the brink of which a little child had crept. One tiny hand stretched out over the abyss, and its baby face was turned, with a smile, towards its mother, from whose arms it had evidently just escaped. That playful look was a challenge for her to advance, and she, poor mother, with that deep, dumb despair in her face, saw the heedless innocent just poised upon the brink, beyond her reach, and knew that if she moved towards it a single step, it too would move, to cer tain death. But with heaven-taught instinct, she had torn the drapery from her breast, and exposed the sweet fountain of life to her infant. Spite of its peril, you felt it would be saved. Such was the picture. Day after day, when the artists, his friends, gathered at their customary meals, his poor, pale face was seen among them, listless, without a smile, and seemingly wistful of the end, when he might retire again to his secluded studio. One day he was missing. The second came, but he came not. The third arrived still absent. A presentiment of his fate seemed to have infused itself in every mind. They went to his room. THE LAST PICTURE. 19 There, seated in a chair before his unfinished picture, they found him dead his pencil in his hand. THE BEATING OF THE HEART. * HEAKT that beateth, trembleth, yearneth ! Now with grief and pain assailed, Now with joy triumphant burneth Now in sorrow veiled ! Moveless as the wave-worn rock In the battle's deadly shock, When the surging lines advance Doom on every lance ! * Yet melting at some mimic show, Or plaintive tale of woe. Faint with love, of conquest proud, Seared with hate, with fury riven, Like the fire-armed thunder-cloud By the tempest driven : Hark ! the chords triumphant swell ! Floods on floods of raptures roll 22 THE BEATING OF THE HEART. Sudden ! strikes the passing bell, Life has reached the goal. Though at times, Death, I cry, Ope the door, thy son entreateth, Though from Life I strive to fly, Still the heart-clock beateth ! No, not yet I wish for thee, Gaunt and pale, remorseless King ! Soon, too soon, thou'lt come for me O'er life triumphing. Glow and dance in every vein, Crimson current, ruby river, To thy source return again, As the teeming summer rain Seeks again the parent main, The all-bounteous giver : Beat, dear Heart, against my breast Tell me thou art there again : Life and thee together rest In that hold of joy and pain; Stronghold yet of life thou art, Kestless, ever-working Heart ! Night comes, draped in shadows sombre, Morning, robed in light appears ! THE BEATING OF THE HEART. 23 Minutes, hours, without number, Days, and months, and years Pass like dreams : yet still thou art Ever busy, restless Heart ! When his doom the Captive heareth, How thy summons, stroke on stroke, Tells the fatal moment neareth, Sounding like the heavy stroke Distant heard ere falls the oak ! How the maiden fain would hide Thee within her bosom white, Still against her tender side Throbs the soft delight ! Every pulse reveals the flame, Every fibre softly thrills, But how innocent the shame That her bosom fills. In the Hero, firm as steel, In the Virgin, soft as snow ; In the Coward, citadel Where the recreant blood doth go, Hiding from the sight of foe ; 24 THE BEATING OF THE HEART. In the Mother's anxious breast. Who can picture thy unrest ? When her babe lies low, With the fitful fever burning, No relief still restless turning Ever to and fro ! In the Bride what mixt commotion When the words " Be man and wife ! " Thrill her with that deep emotion, Known but once in life. Priceless jewel ! hidden treasure ! All the world to thee is naught : Working loom of ceaseless pleasure, Weaving without stint or measure Woof and web of thought : Hive of life ! where drone and bee Struggle for the mastery : In thy never-ceasing motion, Like a great star in the ocean, Shines the Soul ! thy heavenly part, Throbbing, life-assuring Heart ! AUNT MIRANDA. ~\TO matter what people might say of Aunt Miranda, ^ Rowley and I loved her, not in spite of, but because of her fine stately ways, which were the natural result of a nice feeling of honor, that suffering had only rendered more delicate and sensitive. How often have we caught a glimpse of her tall, upright figure in church, with asperity written in sharp lines in every lineament, lurking, as it were, in the angles of her stiff black silk dress, and plait ing and pointing the little frill that circled her neck, and thought how patient, good, and noble she really was, how much better at heart than many around her, who were considered kinder and more amiable, because they could assume the thin, specious gloss of conventional courtesy whenever it suited them. 26 AUNT MIRANDA. There were great times when Christmas came, and Rowley and I had to wait until the younger ones had gone to bed, before we could steal around to Aunt Miranda's, to bring her to the house, with the great basket full of dolls, and jumping jacks, and tin horses, and cornucopias, and ducks that would cry "quaack" and open their bills, when you squeezed the patent bellows of white kid upon which they stood. And then, if at any time in the year, would the old lady put on one of those sweet smiles, which Row ley and I thought the most heavenly we had ever seen, as she filled the stockings of her favorites little curly-headed Bell, and sturdy Harry, and poor Peter ; whom I believe she loved best, because he had a lame foot which was in curable, and the handsomest face of all. Nor do Rowley and I forget how grand and formal she was with strangers, and how she never unbent herself be fore Margaret, her handmaid, who had lived with her for thirty years and upward, and how Margaret loved her and looked up to her ; and how,- when a man came one night to see Margaret, what a sad face the old -lady had until he was gone ; and how, when Margaret came up with a plate full of apples for us boys, the old lady said, " Margaret, never do you marry ! " and how poor Margaret burst into tears and said " It was only a man from her father's which AUNT MIRANDA. 27 were married already, and have four children two boys and two girls." Rowley and I were cousins, but Aunt Miranda was his aunt, not mine, nor did I ever call her by that name until one Sunday afternoon, when Rowley took my hand in his, and went up to her as she was sitting by the front window, and said, with his eyes cast down, " Aunt Miranda, mayn't he call you Aunt Miranda, too ? " and the old lady brushed away the glossy brown hair from his forehead, and kissed it very softly, and then turned away and looked out of the window again, and I have called her Aunt Miranda ever since. It was difficult for Rowley and me to realize that which the old lady told us of at times ; of her grand parties, when she was young and gay, and her husband was one of the richest and handsomest men of his time ; of the costly dresses she used to wear, and the jewels and rouge ; and, most difficult of all to imagine, of her card- parties, when she would sit up until near morning, playing for money, and not inconsiderable sums either, to please her husband, who wished her to be as fashionable and brilliant as himself. Rowley and I used to think, at times, the old lady felt some pride in recalling these scenes, when she was a bloom- 28 . AUNT MIRANDA. ing bride, but she ended always with the sad story of wreck and ruin which followed ; of her gallant and hand some husband dying of the fever, a bankrupt ; and of her taking nearly all her own property to pay his debts (which she need not have done), until the last creditor was satis fied ; and then Aunt Miranda was left with a slender pit tance and an only daughter to begin the world anew. But of that daughter not a word had been spoken for many a year. Kowley and I could just call to mind a face possessed of such beauty as children remember like a dream, and perhaps never find again in life ; her name was no more mentioned by Aunt Miranda, nor did Kowley or I know any thing except that it was a mystery, not to be breathed, at home or abroad, to others or ourselves. We heard once of a Mrs. Dangerfeldt that was all whether living or dead we did not know, and did not dare to inquire. One day, when Kowley was lying dangerously ill with the quinsy sore-throat, I went to ask Aunt Miranda to come and see him, for he loved to have her by his bedside. The cellar door, in those days, was never fastened until night, and as it was Sunday afternoon, I knew Margaret was at church, so, without giving the old lady the trouble of coming to the hall door, I opened the cellar softly and AUNT MIRANDA. 29 went down that way. There is something desolate in a lonely kitchen on Sunday afternoon, when the fires have died out, and the cat sits, looking wicked and suspicious, amid the cold ashes on the hearth. I know my footsteps were as light as pussy's own when I passed through, for I did not want to disturb the silence which reigned there, and so, ascending the narrow stairs, I found myself in the hall. The parlors were open they too were vacant. Then it was, while wondering at the solitude, I heard a sound in the upper room, so unlike any thing I had ever heard not a cry of grief, or groan of pain but a faint, inarticulate moaning, so different from a human voice, and yet so unlike that of an animal, that my very flesh crept with terror. My pores seemed to drink in the sounds as I stood there, dumb with indefinable dread, and some mo ments elapsed before I could collect my thoughts. Then it came to me that Aunt Miranda might be in a fit, or something of the kind, and so, without waiting, I bounded up the stairs and thrust open the door of her apartment. There was a small black trunk upon the floor, open ; and scattered around it lay several dresses which had evi dently belonged to some little child. But oh, the piercing lustre of those eyes which glared upon me as she rose from her knees when I entered ! That wild, terrible look, as if 30 AUNT MIRANDA. it would blast me ! /, who had rashly ventured in upon the mystery which had been buried, as within a tomb, for so many years ! Her cap was thrust back from her high forehead, and the thick black locks, mingled with gray, appeared to writhe around her fingers like serpents, as she came on ; her lips working, but uttering no sound, until her face was so close I could feel her hot breath upon my cheek and then stretching forth her fingers as if to clutch me, her voice came forth in a fierce, passionate sob, and she fell forward, and rolled over at my feet. It was the most awful moment in my life, as I stood there with clasped hands, looking upon the poor, senseless form before me ; instantly I heard a heavy step upon the stairs ; fortunately, it was the faithful Margaret who had returned, and the blood rushed to my heart with such joy when I saw her homely, good-natured face, that I well-nigh swooned with the sudden revulsion. Some time elapsed before I saw Aunt Miranda again. It was at night, in my bedroom ; a few sticks were smoul dering, and darting fitful gleams of light from the hearth, upon the looped up curtains of the bed ; flickering warmly within the folds of chintz ; and now and then bringing to view a sickly array of small bottles on the mantel. Row ley was sitting at the foot of the bed, and beside it, hold- AUNT MIRANDA. 31 ing my fever-wasted hand in her own, with the same sweet, angelic smile upon her face, which Kowley and I loved so much, was Aunt Miranda. I had been delirious for some weeks with the brain fever. Kowley and I loved each other dearly. We had had too many bickerings too many little quarrels too many heartfelt reconciliations for either of us not to know that. So after we graduated (and Kowley had the valedictory), we commenced the study of medicine together, with Dr. Frisbee, and after that was over, put up our two narrow, black tin signs, with gold letters, on a very white window shutter, one under the other, in a secluded part of the town, where practice was plenty, and patients were poor. How many times Aunt Miranda came to visit us ! She seemed to know all that was going on among the poor folks in our neighborhood, although she lived in a distant part of the town ; and if she did not abate one jot of her dignity when with the poor, her efforts to relieve the suf ferers never flagged ; there she was, by the bedside, with the same smile Kowley and I loved so much (that angelic smile), and often and often a fee was paid us out of her own pocket, when our services had been more arduous than usual. It was of no use to refuse it. Aunt Miranda had an imperative way with her, so lofty, we did not dare to 32 AUNT MIRANDA. contradict it. And her custom (if it might so be called) was worth more to us than that of all the rest of our pa tients put togetjier. It was a dreary night in mid-winter (how well I re member it), when Rowley and I met at the door of our of fice after the usual rounds among the sick. It was late too ; the only light visible was a sort of luminous halo which surrounded the cellar window of a baker, far up the street, who was preparing bread for the morning. Lamps there were none, but a moon was somewhere, which only made the gloom palpable the snow did not fall, but swept through the streets in horizontal lines, blinding and sting ing " like wasps' tails," as the old watchman said around the corner. While we stood there knocking the snow off our feet, a large willow tree was blown down across the road, and a white ghastly sheet dropt with a loud noise from the roof of an adjoining house. Rowley and I were glad to get by the office hearth, on which a few embers kept a bright look-out among the ashes, and so laying on the wood we soon had a cheerful hickory fire. Still the wind growled and mumbled outside, with the dreary accompani ment of creaking signs and groaning trees ; sometimes it lulled for a moment, only to return with appalling violence the house fairly rocked with it, and we could hear the AUNT MIRANDA. 33 snow beating and sifting through the crevices of the win dows. Tired as we were, we did not think of sleep, but sat as men sometimes will in great storms, telling dismal stories, or listening to the noises outside, or talking of the poor we had visited, many of whom were ill provided with shelter against such pitiless weather. *So the time passed on beyond mid night ; the wind by and by went down, but the snow kept falling softly and fast ; I thought I heard a noise- hush ! a muffled sound like a watchman's club in the distance- then another then voices approaching, we heard heavy steps on our stoop, and a loud knock at the doo*r. Rowley and I sprang to our feet in an instant, and putting back the bolt, saw three men, watchmen, bearing a body ; we assisted them in, they laid him (it was a man) upon our bed, which stood partly behind the office door ; he was not dead, but very nearly so. Upon examination, we found three wounds in the left temple ; the central one larger than the other two, but none of them more than the eighth of an inch square, nor much more than an inch apart they were deep, however, as we ascertained by the probe. The largest wept a little blood with every pulsation ; the man was insensible, but his chest heaved strongly ; we knew he could not live long, in fact in the course of an hour his breathing grew fainter, and fainter stopped : he was dead. 34 AUNT MIRANDA. The fatal blow had been given with a weapon so differ ent from any thing we could imagine, that we had a long- discussion as to the probabilities, as we sat there by the body alone ; for the watchmen had left us to see if they could follow the track of the murderer. We talked on in whispers : outside it grew into a dead calm, and now it was almost daybreak. " Hush ! " said Rowley, " there is some one on the stoop." We listened, there was a faint tap on the window shutter. Kowley threw open the office door, stepped into the hall, and drew the bolt. " What do you want ? " There was no answer, but I heard a step in the hall : a man walked past him, and entered the office. As I said before, the bed was partly hidden by the door, and as the man walked directly towards me, he did not see that which lay behind there, close to the wall, on the side opposite to the fireplace. He was a tall, and had been a muscular, man, but noXv worn down with sickness, or famine, or both ; a mass of brown hair fell from beneath his cap, and mingled with his bushy whiskers, which met under his throat ; his clothes were poor, miserably so ; there was no sign of a shirt at his neck, or around his broad, bony wrists ; yet I did not AUNT MIRANDA. 35 know why, he did not seem a beggar or vagabond ; he had a proud, defiant look, that was far from asking any thing of the world in fact, a man you might shrink from, but could not despise. " You are a physician ? " he said, in a slightly broken accent, German, I thought. I bowed. " And," he con tinued, placing his hand on his brow as if to recollect something " yes let me see if you will go I will take you there" he uttered with a sharp emphasis "myself. Yet something may happen ; it is food, warmth, shelter, she requires, as well as medicines take this, you, for fear of accidents ! " He displayed a roll of bills which he held clutched in his left hand "stay," he added, and taking one or two, which he thrust into an old ragged pocket, offered the rest to me. Just then, Kowley shut the office door. The man turned suddenly such a look as he gave that bed ! There it lay the jaws bound up the white cerements soaked with blood from the temples, ghastlier, if possible, by the dull flame of the office candle, and the uncertain light from the fire. But recovering instantly, with a slight bow to me, the man said, " Come, you may save a life an hour hence may be too late." I took my cloak. He opened the door without looking .36 AUNT MIRANDA. again toward the bed. As I passed on, Rowley caught my arm and whispered, " I suspect that man ; had we not better " " No," I replied. " The dying woman first that is something the law takes no cognizance of." So, wrapping my cloak closely around me, I followed. When I stepped out into the street, I was surprised at the change ; the moon was now shining brilliantly in the heavens, and the hushed snow looked beautiful in her light. Every roof, wall, and chimney threw down a flat, black effigy of itself, in sharp, clearly defined shadow on that white, sparkling ground. Here and there a tree spread its delicate tracery against the sky ; carts, piled up with snow, stood hub-deep in snow ; fences half-buried in snow ; piles of logs, with their black ends projecting from a pyramid of snow ; pumps, with beards of icicles, and crowns of snow ; snow everywhere, on every thing, met the eye at every step. Absorbed as I had been with the events of the night, I could not help looking with admiration upon this beautiful scene, which I had come upon so unexpectedly. So, walking on in silence with my companion, we came close to a man before I was aware. It was one of the watchmen, who had gone to look after the track of the murderer. " Ah, Doctor another call, hey ? " AUNT MIRANDA. 37 " Yes." " Waal, we ain't got onto the right scent yet ; Bobbins and Towsey has gone down to the Coroner's ; we tracked him way up beyond the burying ground, and then we kind o' think he must 'a doubled ; " (either it was imagina tion, or my companion drew closer to my side) " but he can't be fur off. Body down there yet ? " He pointed toward the office. " Yes." "All right, I hope dead, I 'spect, hey ?" "Yes." "Goodnight." I had a feeling of relief when the watchman uttered these last words,. which I echoed with all my heart. We passed the bakery, now paling its ineffectual fires, and struck into a narrow cross-street. It grew darker, for a cloud crossed the moon we came to a blind alley or entry my companion went in, and I. The snow had drifted into the alley some distance, but I soon found myself upon bare boards, rotted in the centre, forming a sort of gutter, in which my foot caught more than once as we passed through. Then we came to a narrow yard, with a high fence ; we went up an outside staircase, so old and flighty it trembled with every step ; 38 AUNT MIRANDA. and then turned into a dark passage of the attic through which we were obliged to grope our way. I must confess, I felt some trepidation to be alone with such a man, in such a place. " Duty courage ! " I muttered. The words went straight to my heart, and I was reassured : we came to a door which my companion opened, and I found myself in a little room. The cloud had passed from the moon, and her light shone full through the dormer window, casting the outlines of the casement down upon the floor, which was partly covered with snow that had blown through the broken panes. A bed, if bed it could be called, was in one corner, and as we entered, a figure sat up. and turned its face toward us and the moonlight. There have been moments in my life, (and such, I be lieve, is the experience of many,) when what was before me seemed the remembrance only of something seen before as if the same thing passed over twice as if one had a glimpse of pre-existence, identical with this, but referable to life beyond the scope of memory ; more vivid than any dream, but more fleeting and mysterious. Such a feeling I had, when that face turned toward us and the moonlight. It was that of a woman. Long, black elf-locks coiled around a face, wasted, it is true, but still surprisingly "beautiful. The brilliant hectic, which ac- AUNT MIRANDA. 39 companies certain kinds of fever, was in her cheeks, her eyes were large, and from the same cause, lustrous ; she gave a smile of recognition, it seemed, which showed a row of white teeth, and suddenly turning, lifted a bundle from the bed, which she rocked to and fro. "It is our little one," said the man, " wait here ; I am going for something to build a fire." He turned, and then I heard his heavy footsteps as he descended the outside stairs. Frequent as had been my opportunities of seeing the condition of the poor, nothing I had met with could compare with the utter barrenness of that apartment. With the exception of the bed, which lay upon the floor (a mis erable heap of ragged carpet), there was nothing to be seen ; neither table, nor chair, nor plate, nor cup, nor a single article to cook with ; the walls were black with smoke and dirt, but there was no vestige of a fire ; there was nothing in the room, but the rags, the woman and her child, and the snow. Yet to me it seemed a recollec tion of something seen before. The man returned now with short pieces of firewood from the neighboring bakery, and a bright fire sparkled upon the desolate heartn. Then he laid a loaf tenderly by her side and said, " She has not tasted such as that for weeks but what shall we do, now, Doctor ? " A young physician has need of practice among the 40 AUNT MIRANDA. poor to answer such a question. He may acquire experi ence enough in ordinary cases, to obtain a certain degree of skill in examining the diagnosis of a peculiar complaint. Sickness is, indeed, a sad visitant among those in comfort able circumstances, but when it comes accompanied with penury, cold, and famine ; when the fever, or the pesti lence, stalks among the helpless indigent, it is indeed ter rible. Look at the records of the City Inspector, ye who have abundant means, and believe me, it is a lesson better worth learning than many a plethoric sermon you listen to in your velvet-lined pew ! The woman now lay on the floor, motionless, in a sort of torpor, with her eyes partly open ; it did not require much penetration to discover the symptoms of that visita tion known as the malignant scarlet fever. It had been prevalent in our neighborhood, and the cases were unusu ally fatal ; so I told him, as I rested on my knees by the bedside. He said nothing, but merely clasped his hands and pressed them very hard over his eyes. " Have you nothing," said I, "to close up those broken panes, and keep out this bitter cold ? " He took off his poor ragged coat, but I told him my old cloak would be better, which he accepted thankfully, and stuffed it into the apertures of the casement. In AUNT MIRANDA. 41 coming back, his foot pushed something through the heap of snow beneath the window. It was a piece of oak stick about five feet long, and a few inches in width, studded with nails driven through it, as if it had been a cleat or batten, stripped from some old house or box ; it was also broken at one end. He laid it hastily upon the fire, but it was so saturated with moisture it would not burn. I knew not why, but I watched with intense inter est the flames idly curling around it. " How old is this child ? " I was looking at the wasted features of his little girl. " About four years ; our boy was fifteen, he is dead ; I could almost say thank God." " She has not the fever I perceive if I may take her with me, I am sure I will find for her a place of shelter. (I thought of aunt Miranda's.) To move your wife now would be fatal we must make her comfortable here if pos sible." He bowed his head slightly. " You can you will at tend to that, I hope," he said. " If I am called away, you have the money I gave you, which use as you think best." " Money ? you gave me no money," I replied ; " you offered it but I did not take it do you not remember when the office door shut, and you turned around so suddenly ? " 42 AUNT MIRANDA. The man stared at me with a wild unutterable look in his eyes, which made me shrink back j he clutched his breast convulsively with his hand, threw open the* door, and staggered out as if struck with a blow. Just then I heard footsteps on the outside stairs ; then a noise ; voices ; and a scuffle. I ran out ; two men, officers of police, had him by the arms, but he was swaying them like reeds. Sud denly one of his assailants slipped, and fell the whole length of the stairs ; in a moment he had lifted the other and thrown him over the rails, down, perhaps twenty feet, into the yard below ; and then with a bound cleared it himself, regained his feet, and dashed through the alley. I went down to assist the policemen. One was stunned by the fall down the stairs in fact nearly dislocated his neck ; the other had sprained his ankle and could not walk. " He's paddled, Jimmy," said the man with the bad ankle. Jimmy, who was sitting up on his end in the snow, assented to the truth of the remark by a short grunt. " That's the man, Doctor ; " growled the policeman, as I assisted him to rise ; "he dropt a roll of bills in your office, which belonged to dizeezed. Also we found his pocket-book empty in the street, and a piece of batten, with three nails, that fits the wownds. Where's that Barker ? " he continued. Barker hopped upon one leg to AUNT MIRANDA. 43 the side of the staircase, and picked up the batten. I went up the stairs, took off the now partly-burnt oak stick from the fire, and found the fractured end fitted exactly the piece found by the officers. There was no doubt as to who was the murderer. It was now broad daylight. One of the officers took a survey of the room the woman still lay asleep ; then he assisted his limping companion through the alley ; I was again alone, but Kowley soon joined me. After a brief recital of the events which had passed, I borrowed his cloak, wrapped it around the little girl, and leaving him with the patient, carried my light young burden toward the house of Aunt Miranda. Was it not strange that she, the proud, unbending Aunt Miranda, was the only one of all my acquaintances, with whom* I could take such a liberty ? In truth I felt as if I had been commanded by her to do what I was doing. Such a thing as her refusing to admit the faint, thin, ghostly little unfortunate, with its manifold wants carry ing in its veins, perhaps, a deadly pestilence, never entered my mind. I was not mistaken ; I remember now how gently, and yet how grandly she took the slight load of poverty in her arms not holding it from, but pressing it to her breast ; how, an hour after, I found it wide awake, 44 AUNT MIRANDA. and seated in her lap, comfortably clad in one of those dresses I imagined I had seen years before, on a certain occasion, when my boy's heart seemed shrivelling up with terror. I had told her the story of the man and his wife, and asked her advice. She coincided with me that it would not do to remove the sufferer, but added, " we can make her room comfortable, I trust," and then in a stiff, precise sort of way " Margaret and I will nurse the poor creature by turns. Has she no friends, no family connections here ?" she asked, after 'a pause. " None, I imagine ; surely if she had they would have some pity for her. Even the poorest might have spared something for such an abject." " I think," said the old lady, " I will go there now. Margaret ! my shawl and hat ; bring the .muff too ; it is bitter cold. Let the man stop shovelling the snow from the walk ; give him three blankets and a pillow, and let him go with me. Do you go on before," she continued, looking at me ; " you walk faster than I." Then she turned to the child with one of those angelic smiles . Kowley and I loved so much, and lifting it gently from her lap, laid it in a warm little nest she had made for it on the sofa. I gave her directions how to find the place, and once more was on my way towards my patient. AUNT MIRANDA. 45 When I readied the miserable street in which she lived, I met Eowley. He told me he had procured an old black wench to act as nurse ; " but/' said he, " I fear it will be of little avail ; she has been delirious ever since you left, and calls in the most piteous way for her child her 'Andy. 3 From what I gather, she must have eloped, or something of the kind, when very young. I never saw any thing more touching than the way she stretches out her arms and cries, e Forgive me, mother ; forget and forgive, oh my mother ! ' I believe too," continued Kowley, " they were not married at first, but a year or so after she ran away. I had some broth made for her, which she ate but little of, putting it aside and calling ( Andy ! Andy ! here my child, my child ! ' " " Andy/' said I, " is a boy's name." " So it is," answered Kowley ; " I do not know how to account for it, but she evidently meant the little girl, for she kept feeling in the vacant place for her. Sometimes she would upbraid her, and say, ' You have learnt my lesson by heart, you wicked Andy ; but you are worse than I, for you began younger.' I gave her an anodyne," continued Rowley, " but it has had little effect upon her poor thing ; she cannot live, I fear." While we were talking, we saw coming up the street, 46 AUNT MIRANDA. in the most lofty and dignified manner possible, Aunt Mi randa, followed by the man with the basket and the blan kets. Although her dress was always plain, and never costly, the old lady had such a way with her you could not mistake her for a resident of that quarter ; nor would you take her to be a relative, or an acquaintance of the people there. You felt at once she was on a mission of some kind ; and yet there was nothing about her of the benevolent lady who might be vice-president of fifty auxiliary sewing societies, and who, by personal inspection, kept a sharp look-out that no impostor, in the disguise of a pauper, swallowed any crumbs that fell from the tables of the humane associ ation for the relief of the meritorious indigent. There was not a drop of haughty blood in her veins, nor the slightest touch of condescension in her manner with her, it was one of two things, either real, heart-felt kindness, or firm, inexorable pride. When she came up, Kowley and I made her acquainted with the present state of our patient, and of her anxiety for the child we had spirited away. We also mentioned the fact of her speaking of her own mother, and hinted at the possibility of her having committed some unpardonable act ; such as an elopement without marriage, or the like, by which she had disgraced her family. We did not go AUNT MIRANDA. 47 into details, however ; once or twice a shadow, as it were, passed over the face of Aunt Miranda. " Well, well/' she said, rather sharply, " let us go on, let us go on, and see what can be done for her poor creature." I have read of officers, who, in the battle-field, pre served the stiff, erect carriage of the parade ground, but my doubt about the truth of the story never entirely dis appeared until I saw Aunt Miranda ascend tliat staircase. We reached the room " Shall I leave these here ? " said the man who brought the blankets. " No stay until I tell you to go/' replied Aunt Miranda. He obeyed of course. If the room looked dismal by moonlight and early dawn, it was doubly so in the broad, open sunlight. The walls, begrimed with smoke, and stained with water, that had trickled from the roof, were full of cracks and crevices ; here and there large pieces of plaster had fallen, exposing the laths ; the floor, no longer hidden by the snow, was spongy with age, and rotted away in some places, and the miserable heap which served for a bed, was a sickening bundle of mouldy rags and fragments of old carpet. " I never saw such misery/' said Aunt Miranda, looking at me and clasping her hands. The poor old blear-eyed wench, who was rocking herself 48 AUNT MIRANDA. over the fire, got off the stool she had brought with her, and offered it to Aunt Miranda. The old lady took it with the tips of her fingers, gave it a shake or two, and sat down in her lofty way beside the bed. The woman, lying with her face partly covered, partly turned to the wall, was muttering something to herself. At last we could make out these words : " The cunning minx when she looked up at me with her bright, wicked eyes, learned that secret then. She drew it from me as I suckled her at the breast ; drew it from me when a babe I learned it, and she learned it. But she began earlier than I. Why not ? The son did so. But he died in my arms, poor boy, when his race was run. But Andy I shall see no more. Never, never. That's a lesson for mothers. Your boys are always your boys, but your girls are other men's. My mother ! my mother ! my mother ! Let her pull up the green grass from my grave, and trample on it, yet I will love her better than my daughter loves me. Yes, yes. The sun dies and the day dies, but we keep close to the men we love. Let him beat me let me scoop the crust from the swill of our neighbors, yet we love on. He stole me in the snow, and we'll die in the snow. There are the ' bells and the Bays round the corner ; off only for a frolic and a dance but we never AUNT MIRANDA. 49 came back. There she sits, with the light burning waiting for her daughter waiting waiting. There she sits now, mother, mother, mother ! He had a sweet voice once ; oh the songs the songs that won my heart ! " Here she sat up erect in the bed, and turned her brilliant eyes full upon Aunt Miranda. I had been watching that gothic countenance during the monologue of the poor creature, wrapped in her rags. I had noticed the gradations which passed over it first of patient complaisance, then of pity, then of absorbed inter est. But when those large bright eyes flashed upon Aunt Miranda, she started with such an instant, terrible look of recognition with the history of a whole life of sorrow, as it were, written on her face in a moment, that it was abso lutely appalling. I read it at once. The mystery had unfolded itself before me. That inexorable spirit ; those lineaments, saving the slight tremulous motion of the chin, rigid as sculptured stone ; those fixed dilated eyes, were those of the mother, who, without seeking for, had found, after seventeen years, in yonder squalid heap, her daughter, her only child, once her pride, her hope now, what ? " Do not hurt me," said the poor creature, shrinking from her, " I will not harm you for the world." I saw the tremulous motion from the chin spread itself 50 AUNT MIRANDA. over the whole visage of Aunt Miranda. Tears sprang from her eyes, her pride was unequal to this trial. The founda tion gave way, then the superstructure fell was submerged for ever, and above it rose the beautiful rainbow of consola tion. She took the squalor, the misery, the pestilence, the poor wreck of a life in her arms, and sanctified it with a mother's pity, and a mother's blessing. I felt at this time an uncommon moistening of the eye lids ; and the man with the blankets managed to drop his basket, with a view probably of relieving his mind. As for the poor wench, she was in a corner, and a paroxysm of tears. To tell how our patient recovered, how little Miranda, or "Andy," as we called her, budded and bloomed into womanhood ; how the body of Dangerfeldt was found in the river, near the Dry Dock, that fatal morning, would, I fear, not add much to my story. But Aunt Miranda grew in grace, her pride was gone, she became the meekest of the meek ; only upon two occasions, in after life, did she remind me of her former self : one was that of the mar riage of Margaret, her handmaid, to the man with the four children (who had lost his wife, by the way) ; and the other was, when a sharp, prying, inquisitive little woman asked her, in a free and easy sort of way, " if the AUNT MIRANDA. 51 husband of Mrs. Dangerfeldt had not met with some ter rible accident, or something of the kind, when he came to his end?" One day, a wet and stormy one I remember, the 24th of December, Aunt Miranda had bought a large turkey, of a huckster, in the market. She always bargained for every thing paid what she agreed to pay and kept herself comfortably within the limits of her income. So she knew always exactly the state of her finances, which she kept not in a book, but in a long ash-colored silk purse. When she came home she found the man had paid her two cents too much. So back to market goes Aunt Miranda, in a very nervous state, for fear the man might be off before she got there. Fortunately the man was there, to whom she returned the money belonging to him, but unfortu nately she took a cold, from which she never recovered. It was more like the living, than the dead face, of Aunt Miranda, that which lay in the coffin, with the smile upon the face, Rowley and I loved so much that angelic smile ! H E T A B E L rpHERE'S a deep pond hid in yon piny cover 1 That's garlanded with rose-blooms wild and sweet, Emvreathed with pensile willows, hanging over Green, bowery nooks, and many a soft retreat Where Hetabel and I did often meet. 54 HETABEL. There the brown throstle sings, there skims the swallow, There the blue budded ash its foliage weaves From deep-struck roots, broidered with sede and mallow ; Fair lies the pool, beneath its ridgy ea^s, Blotted with waxen pods and ornate leaves. There workless rests the mill, each withered shingle Lets through the sun-threads on the knotted floor ; There, where the village hinds were wont to mingle, Tall weeds upspring ; and in the cobwebbed door, One sees plain written, "they shall come no more !" There the white cottage stands ! shadow'd and sullen, Its ruined porch with fruitless vines o'erclung ; In beds, and pebbled paths, the vagrant mullen Tops the rank briers, where once musk roses sprung, Heart's-ease, and slender spires with blue-bells hung. There, in that solitude, deserted, lonely, Closed in a little Eden of our own, Unvisited, save by the wood birds ; only Ourselves (sweet Hetabel and I) alone, Our very trysting place unsought, unknown, Wandered ; sometimes beneath the pine's dark shadow, Sometimes, at evening, when the mill's thick flume HETABEL. Trembled in silver ; and the distant meadow Was half snow white half hid in sunken gloom, Even as our own lives half joy, half doom. Half joy half doom ! the blissful years are faded. And the dark, shadowed half is left to me ; By grief, not time, my scattered hairs are braided With silver threads. And HETABEL ? Ah, she Sleeps by her babe beneath the cypress-tree ! OEANGE BLOSSOMS. T DOUBT whether any man, be he young or old, ever at tended the wedding of a young bride without a certain feeling of awe. To me the service appears more impres sive than that of a funeral. The pall lies upon the poor pale effigy ; we listen to the words of hope and consola tion ; the tributary tears fall as the mournful pageant moves on ; the tomb closes ; night falls around it ; and in the darkness and silence we turn from the dead, dumb, voiceless past, to seek new loves and new sympathies with the living. But a bride, in the morning of her days ; standing up on the threshold of a new existence ; crowned like a queen with the virgin coronal, soon to be laid aside, for ever ; with the uncertain future before her ; repeating those solemn 58 ORANGE BLOSSOMS. pledges, and assuming those solemn responsibilities which belong not to maidenhood ; robed in the vestments of in nocence, and giving her young, confiding heart, into the keeping of another ; seems to me a more touching specta cle than that denoted by the nodding plumes, the sad procession, and the toll of the funeral bell. There was more levity and love in Rowley's composi tion than in mine*; at least they were more easily excited in him than in me. He was always beside some pretty girl or other ; at a party he would be smiling and chat ting with, perhaps, half a dozen, while I was only too happy if I could get into a corner with one. Once or twice I was reproved for trifling with the affections of certain young ladies ; "I had been too particular in my attentions " they said. Trifling with affection ! I trifle ! such a thing as anybody falling in love with me never suggested itself. If it had, a glance at the severe, homely face I was obliged to shave every morning, sufficed to put that conceit, out of my head. Besides, the mere idea of that beautiful mystery called " a wedding," was enough to bewilder me. I could no more have asked Fanny Hazleton (the most intimate friend I had, except Rowley) to assist me in getting up some nuptials for the benefit of our friends, than I could ORANGE BLOSSOMS. 59 have stepped upon the stage and played Romeo to Fanny Kemble's Juliet. Yet the subject was a favorite one with Rowley and me as we sat by the office fire ; the difference between us was, he always associated it with some pretty girl of his acquaintance, but to me it was something illu sive, and remote ; suggestive mainly of an ideal white veil, and an imaginary chaplet of orange flowers. One evening Rowley took some loose papers from the table. " Listen," said he, " and tell me who this reminds you of " " To gaze upon the fairy one, who stands Before you, with her young hair's shining bands, And rosy lips half parted ; and to muse Not on the features which you now peruse, Nor on the blushing bride, but look beyond Unto the angel wife, nor feel less fond To keep thee but to one, and let that one Be to thy life what warmth is to the sun, And fondly, closely cling to her, nor fear The fading touch of each declining year. This is true love, when it hath found a rest In the deep home of manhood's faithful breast." " Now," said Rowley with a smile which poorly con cealed a lurking disquiet, " who did you think of while I was reading ? " 60 ORANGE BLOSSOMS. "Nobody/' I answered. "I was struck merely with the beauty of the verses." " Oh cousin, cousin ! " and Rowley, turning his head a little, looked at me askance ; " tell me ; did not a pretty young lady of our acquaintance come into your mind while I was reading ? " "No," I said, "who can you allude to ?" " A very pretty girl," answered poor Kowley, and added in rather a tremulous voice, "her name begins with an F." "Fanny Hazleton?" Rowley nodded, I thought he looked uncommonly serious. " Fanny Hazleton ? " I repeated, " why Rowley, she is the last person I would have thought of." " Are you serious in what you say ? " Rowley was very much in earnest when he put this question. " Tell me ; Do you mean what you say ? Are you not in love with Fanny very much in love ? " " Well, Rowley," I replied, " since you have brought me to think over the matter, I am not sure but what I am." My cousin sank back in the chair, thrust his hand in his breast, which I perceived rose and fell with the tide of emotion, and sighed heavily. ORANGE BLOSSOMS. 61 " And what if I do love her ? " I continued, " there are not many like her/' Rowley cast a look at me of the most sorrowful acqui escence. " But I am afraid Fanny's sentiments towards me, are not such as would induce her to place her happiness in my keeping." Here a burning stick of wood rolled from the fire almost to Rowley's feet. He did not move, so I took the tongs and put it back. " Rowley, what is the matter ? I was only bantering you. Fanny does not love me ; I am sure of that. With me she is too confiding too sisterly. Come, cousin, since you question me I will question you. Are you not in love with Fanny very much in love ? " He laid his hot hand upon mine, and pressed it very hard. Poor Rowley ! At this time the influenza was prevalent in our part of the town, sometimes attended with all the symp toms of a severe bilious fever. I remember crawling out into the warm May sun, after some weeks' confinement, and imprudently walking so far, I was obliged to get a carriage to convey me home again. Of course this little bit of un professional practice was followed by a relapse, and it was 62 ORANGE BLOSSOMS. almost the middle of June before I was again able to go about. By the advice of two physicians (Kowley and my self), I took that most agreeable prescription " change of ir," and found myself much recruited after a few days' sojourn at Saratoga Springs. There -are few places more captivating to the eye than the breadth of greenery bounded by the spacious piazzas of the United States Hotel at Saratoga. In the "leafy month of June " it is peculiarly so. Leaves, sunshine, and greensward mingle harmoniously. There is none of the rush and excitement of fashion that tinhappy conse quence of Eve's endeavor to make herself look a little more becoming. One loves to loiter around, drinking in the de light placidly. It is stilly, very stilly, at night ; and then, if perchance you pace the piazza with some pensive maid, or wander as far as the white temple of Hygeia, standing- silent and beautiful in the moonlight, ten chances to one, you will ask her a momentous question, and the chances are about even she will whisper " Yes" if she love you. One afternoon, the cars sailed into the depot, and soon after a few travellers came through the broad gate at the end of the lawn. There were three ladies and a little boy. The young lady (for the others represented mother and aunt) carried a shawl upon her arm, and a little Indian ORANGE BLOSSOMS. 63 basket by* the handle, in the most graceful way possible ; I observed, also, she had a pair of full, dark eyes, radiant with lashes ; and a dimple that played upon her cheek like a sunbeam upon the water. There was something too, honest, open, and frank in her face, which you understood at once. It was at the same time pleasing, good-humored, and independent I will not say how handsome. When the dinner bell sounded, and I took my usual seat at the table, there were four chairs turned down opposite, and what I hoped, came to pass my vis-d-vis was the young lady with the dimple. All I remember of her dress was a very graceful line that, sweeping a little below her white neck, curved from one polished shoulder to the other, and in the centre of the wave was a large, a very large; aqua-marine breastpin, holding three little rosebuds, two white, and one pale red. Spite of all I could do, the aqua marine breastpin and the three little rosebuds attracted my attention so much, I was afraid of giving offence by looking so often that way, when I heard the small boy ask his Ma for some champaigne. This indication of early viciousness not being gratified by Mamma, he repeated his request so often that, finding he was already a spoiled chicken, by way of diverting my thoughts from rosebuds 64 ORANGE BLOSSOMS. and dimples, I whispered Andrew Jackson, who was busy with the crumb-brush, to take nay wine and fill the young gentleman's glass quietly, when nobody was looking. This feat being performed rather adroitly, occasioned some sur prise to Master Tom, when he looked around. . " Where did this come from ? " he asked, with eyes wide open. " I believe " said his sister, " you are indebted to the gentleman opposite ; " and then, with a degree of surpass ing grace, she raised the glass, bowed slightly to me, and touched it with her lips. Where the conversation began, and where it ended, I do not now remember. Master Tom was instrumental in bringing it on then Mamma followed and lastly, it was made bewitching by dimples and rosebuds. Saratoga, Ni agara, and Trenton were the themes ; the odorous breath of June breathed through the window blinds, and at last, with my heart full of happiness, and my lap full of lint, I rose and bowed to the departing ladies. " You will go to Niagara, then, early in the morning ? " I bowed again. " I hope you will have as pleasant a journey as we have had ; " the dimple played a moment in the cheek and I was left solus. I had promised myself a ride to the lake after dinner ; ORANGE BLOSSOMS. 65 the horse was waiting at the door and in another moment he was cantering with me down the broad avenue toward the spring. A little, black, petulant barb prancing and dancing sideways, wrangling with the bit in all respects in as good spirits as I was, on that happy afternoon. When we came back in the twilight, and turned the street at the side of the hotel, I happened to look up, and there, resting her head upon her hand, with a book in a room which was nearly opposite to mine was the fair rosebud wearer. At the same moment my wicked little barb swerved aside at some thing, brought me with a crash against an awning post op posite, and started up the street toward the stable, on a run. I believe, if it had not been for that friendly act of pinning me against the post, I would have been unseated. I looked again toward the window as I limped across the street, and caught one more glance, which was the last. After I had packed my trunk in the evening, for my early journey next day, I pulled it near the door, which I left ajar to air the room, for the weather was warm. When I returned, rather late in the evening, I found lying upon it, a souvenir ; there, as if they had been quickly and carelessly dropped, were three little rosebuds two white, and one pale red ! 66 ORANGE RLOSS03IS. I do not think I dreamed that night, of Fanny Hazleton. Trenton, with its gorgeous waterfalls ; its lofty but tresses and wide arcades of natural masonry ; its shadowed lapses of waters, here spreading placidly from Avail to wall, there, washing broad levels of stone even and wide enough for a multitude of carriages ; anon, gathering into a black volume, deep, swift, and terrible as death ; and then, springing from the sharp brink into the light, with its fall ing tide of amber and sparkling crystal, induced me to linger long and lovingly. How often, after nightfall, did I descend the steep staircase, alone for the grandeur of Trenton is felt most at night and looking up beyond the enormous walls, hid in deep shadow, behold the blue woof of the sky, and the mysterious stars gazing down into the abyss. Then are the voices of the waters most audible ; even at a distance, amid the shrill and ceaseless chirp of the cicadas in the trees, amid the whispering echoes, and the rustling leaves, blending and deepening ; with all, and above all, rises the melancholy anthem ; the solemn doom-tones of Trenton ! And in that solitude my thoughts turned ever home ward, and my thoughts were of Kowley, and Fanny Hazleton. ORANGE BLOSSOMS. 67 In past years, it was a day and night's journey from Albany to Buffalo ; passengers were apt to loiter in the towns by the way. An old gentleman who was in the cars, stopped, as I did, for a day, at Syracuse ; we fell into con versation : he intended to stay a day or so at Kochester. That was my intention also. "And Buffalo as well?" " Yes." We agreed to travel together. I do not know if travelling be apt to make one more observing than usual, or whether the mind, absolved from its daily cares, interests itself in surrounding objects for want of its customary employment. Certain it is, as we journeyed on, I was more attracted by seeing a white hand holding a book in front of me, than I ever had been before by a like object, though Fanny Hazleton's was as white as it, or any other. The white hand raised the car window sometimes, but the car window would slide down again. So, as the white hand did not apply the remedy, that is, the loop, to keep the vexatious window in its place, an other hand, less white, looped it up to save trouble. " I was just going to do that myself," whispered my elderly companion. If the glimpses I caught of the white hand while in action were agreeable, when the book was laid aside, and it reposed upon the back of the car seat, within reach, it was 68 ORANGE BLOSSOMS. absolutely absorbing. It was white as a blanched almond, and as round. The fingers melted into sunset at the tips. I felt as if I could snatch it up and run off with it. I forgot all about Fanny Hazleton, the dimple, and the three rosebuds. I was haunted of a white hand. And I saw my elderly companion glistening at it through his spectacles. At last it moved slightly, then adjusted a pretty French bon net, and a round, auburn ringlet, like burnt gold, fell down- and danced upon her shoulder. 'Patter ! patter ! rain against the panes ! The white hand undid the loop, and then it lay in her lap. My elderly companion leaned forward a little probably to see how it looked beside the other one. G-enesee Falls is a pleasant divertisement between the larger dramas of Trenton and Niagara. Amid these grander outlines, any work of man, any thing but primitive nature, would be strikingly incongruous, but I am not sure the white torrents from numberless mill-flumes around the falls of the Genesee do not enhance its beauty. But the lower falls, unshackled by machinery, are dreamy and de licious ; and as I plucked a wild flower from the cliff, I thought again of home and Fanny Hazleton. I was seated on the porch of the hotel, in the cool eve ning, with my 'friend, when a carriage stopped before it, and a gentleman alighting therefrom, handed out three ORANGE BLOSSOMS. 69 ladies. The last appeared to be slightly lame. The hand which rested rather heavily for assistance upon the. arm of the gentleman, was that which has been slightly alluded to. " I shall want you in the morning to take us to the cars/' said the gentleman to the coachman. " What is the matter? " inquired my elderly friend of the driver, after the party had gone in. " Sprained her ankle ! " promptly responded the man. Now, a beautiful woman, meeting with an accident, is always sure to awaken the tenderest solicitude of benevolent old gentlemen. My companion was not an exception to this peculiarity. He did inquire, and very anxiousjy too, of the gentleman who escorted the ladies, whom he met in the course of the evening, as to the extent of the disaster. Fortunately, it was not a serious matter. Three lovelier women never travelled together since the invention of railroads, than those who were seated next morning in the cars, on their way to Buffalo. The smallest one of the group was married ; her compan ions were single. Such sweetly-brilliant eyes as the first turned upon her husband, who sat by her side ; and then the others tall, and moulded with all of nature's cunning, each setting off each such dark lustres beamed beneath the long lashes of the Brunette ! Such tender witchery 70 ORANGE BLOSSOMS. was half hidden in the full hazels of the Blonde ! and in the lap of the latter, buried in the soft folds of a cambric kerchief, was the Jiand, ungloved ; like a large blanched almond ; and beside another as white. We arrived at Buffalo in the evening, and beheld the thin sickle of the new moon uprising from the broad ex panse of Lake Erie. Next morning, at half-past eight, when we took the cars for the Falls, the white hand was leaning upon the arm of the gentleman as seen aforetime. How I wished it had been my arm ! We move off ; objects of interest begin to multiply ; Black Rock, and opposite the remains of Fort Erie, famous for the sortie in the last war. White-hand points to the place. Tonawanda and Grand Island, which once promised to be the new Canaan of the Israelites. Then through the forest, and emerging, we come again upon the river, and old Fort Schlosser, and the scene of the burning of the Caroline. " Durfee was shot near where the post stands/' says the conductor. White-hand points it out. Now we see Navy Island, and the white caps uplift their crests above the rapids. Nearer and nearer we come house after house glides in view the cars stop. Where is Niagara ? I spent the rest of the day at the Falls, and when I ORANGE BLOSSOMS. 7" 1 returned in the evening, found my travelling companion quietly smoking, and in conversation with the gentleman upon whose arm had rested the white hand. I believe young men once were more modest than they are in these degenerate times. Certain it is, I had rather avoided than sought the acquaintance of the gentleman to whom I was now introduced. Not but what I desired it. But the very idea of being intrusive there, made me shrink and blush with shame. " You have been studying the Falls, I presume ? " said the gentleman, who was a Virginian, as I soon after dis covered; "we missed you at dinner. Would you have any objection to make one of our party ? We propose to pay a first visit early in the morning/' Of course I had no objection, and frankly told him so. " We would like to start at five o'clock/' I bowed. Then we discoursed of other matters until bed-time, when I fell asleep, full of happy dreams of the morrow. To tell of that early ride in the leafy month of June, around Goat Island ; how we ascended the Tower, and descended the Biddle staircase ; how fearlessly those beau tiful ladies ran out to the very end of the Terrapin bridge ; how, after breakfast, we visited the Church of the Tusca- 72 ORANGE BLOSSOMS. rora Indians (for it was Sunday), and saw the old squaws come in barefooted, fold themselves in their blankets, and go to sleep just like any other Christians ; how we looked down at the whirlpool, and saw the place where a soldier had leaped two hundred feet into the trees below, and was not killed ; how we crossed to the Canada side, and went on Table Eock, and under the Horse-shoe fall ; how we saw the gray cloud form from the mist, and slowly sailing aloft, catch at last the beautiful tints of morning upon its shoulders ; how we visited Lundy's Lane, and Chippewa, and the clever reply of the Irish driver, who, when he was asked the question whether the Americans or the British were successful at Lundy's Lane, answered, as he glanced around the car, in which were some of Her Majesty's offi cers, " there niver was such a fight since the beginning of the wurrld, but I belave they were about aquil ! " I say, to repeat all this would probably be less interesting to the reader than it was to me. But the white hand did some times rest upon my arm, nor was the mind of the fair Vir ginian less lovely than her outward adornments. So passed the happy days and evenings beside the Thunder- Water. Fanny Hazleton faded into the remote. Bridal veils and orange blossoms interrupted my fancies but they were ORANGE BLOSSOMS. 73 associated with scenes in which I appeared merely as a spectator. I thought of a white hand, given lovingly and confidingly to another. I saw the ring glitter between the beautiful fingers. I pictured to myself some unworthy representative of manhood, winning a prize whose priceless value he could neither understand nor appreciate. As the day of departure drew near, I felt sadder and sadder. It came at last. The stage for Lewiston was at the door. I simply bowed farewell to the ladies, with as much calmness as I could muster. But the fair Virginian rose and said, " I must shake hands with you, and say how much I am obliged to you for your kindness." Then for the first- time did I touch that beautiful hand ; and then, with a heart as heavy as lead, I climbed into the stage, and was soon rolling over the long and weary path that led towards home. There is one cure for sadness ; a prescription, infallible for all but the poverty-stricken. If you are in comfortable circumstances, and withal dissatisfied with your lot go among the poor. If you are neglected by those whose society you covet, or your aspirations are beset with disap pointments go among the poor. If your strivings to be better only make you a mark for vulgar natures, if detrac tion, envy, and malice induce you to fancy life a burthen, 74 ORANGE BLOSSOMS. .still go among the poor. See what misery is before you yourself claim to be miserable. Abandon fruitless sympa thies, confined only to one, and plant them where they are most needed. My life for it, you will be wiser, nobler, happier. See what wretchedness really is, before you con sider existence as a disease, which, but for the future, would be happily alleviated by the pistol or the knife. See if you can come from the abodes of helpless indigence, and repeat, " I have nothing to live for." And even if you nourish a hopeless passion, if fortune, or position inter pose, or if the one you love love not you, still I repeat go among the poor ! The visit will give you strength and consolation ; if you are rich in love, behold the means of employing it where the returns will be still richer. This philosophy was the result of my visit to Niagara. And now to Rowley and Fanny Hazleton. That my cousin was very much admired by the young ladies was unquestionably true. His handsome face and figure might have inspired a passion, even had he not been possessed of better attributes. But with enough to make almost any one vain, I never detected that element in Rowley's composition. If he chatted familiarly with the pretty girls around him, it was because he enjoyed their society, and his honest, manly, straightforward nature ORANGE BLOSSOMS. 75 never suspected any harm in that, or believed it could awaken envy in others. But Fanny Hazleton was rarely found in this merry circle ; in fact, she kept aloof from my cousin, and much as he loved her, what with her refusing to dance, sometimes for a whole evening, and what with those engagements he felt bound to make with others, for fear of giving offence, there was very little show of atten tion to her on his part ; and if Fanny had a secret par tiality for him, no one had been shrewd enough to discover it. I must say, I preferred her society to that of any of the rest ; she was so noble, sensible, and womanly ; there was so much in confidence between us, and so often was I be side her at these little evening parties, that people some times hinted, " that Fanny and a certain person, one of these days, would be sending around cards, and bride's cake." But Kowley knew better than that ; and Fanny only laughed at the story, and told it to me. My cousin's passion for Fanny was very much like the attraction of the planetary bodies ; it revolved around, but never approached its object. To procrastinate the momen tous question, to live suspended, like Mahomet's coffin, between heaven and earth, is a part of the history of every one who loves. Eowley put it off from time to time ; but 76 ORANGE BLOSSOMS. the arrival of a gentleman in the Havre packet brought the affair to such a critical pass that my cousin had to speak, but we will come to that by and by. Two young ladies, who figured occasionally at our cote ries, had a brother, younger than themselves, whose absence in Europe had been the constant theme and staple of their conversation, at all times, and in all places. First, we were given to understand, he was brimful of talent, and immensely literary ; then, he had been bearer of dispatches out, and his services would probably be required by the government for something else as soon as he got back. The accounts of his scholarship, by the Misses Bullwinkle (his sisters), threw a shadow upon the fame of Erasmus ; and the fire of his poetry was at least equal to Lord By ron's, if not superior. Then he had the kindest heart for every body, he was so good, so charitable ; one sewing so ciety had absolutely given up its meetings until his return ; besides, he could fence in a superior manner ; in fact, so fond was he of that pastime, he actually taught Miss Bull- winkle the elder to handle the foils, that he might keep himself in practice ; and in making a pun ! " Oh," said the sisters in a breath, " if you could hear him make a pun, you would laugh fit to kill yourself ! " Of course the arrival of such a prodigy caused no little ORANGE BLOSSOMS. 77 flutter. We were invited to Fanny Hazleton's on Friday night, and every body went to meet Mr. William Bull- winkle. I had been visiting a patient that evening, and did not reach Mrs. Hazleton's until late. When I entered the rooms, I was promptly carried forward, and introduced to the man of genius without delay. He was the centre of an admiring circle, and no doubt had just uttered some thing oracular, for his hands were clasped together, and he was peering around in the faces of his audience, as if he would say, that's so isn't it ? " He had a shining, bul bous forehead, rather scantily thatched with blades of hair ; his face, small, meagre, and yet vulgar, was adorned with a pair of short, rusty whiskers, and a rag of a moustache ; in all respects not what one would call a face eminently prepossessing. As for his figure, it was evidently made up. But in the rapid glance embracing all this, I had taken in another person, whose attitude and expression put me at my wit's end. It was Fanny Hazleton. So ab sorbed was she with her guest at the moment, she scarcely noticed me. She seemed to hang upon his words as if their lingering sweetness still pervaded the atmosphere. I looked around for Eowley. Pale and silent, my cousin was alone in a corner, playing with the tassels of the sofa cushion. 78 ORANGE BLOSSOMS. " Thus the struck deer in some sequestered part, Lies down to die, the arrow in his heart.' 1 " Why Kowley ! what is the matter ? " "Nothing at all," answered my cousin, "I do not feel very well." If Mr. William Bullwinkle's reputation had not already preceded him, that evening would have established it. He had been every where, seen every thing, and met even- body. He brought meerschaums and metaphysics from Germany ; the graces and a correct pronunciation from Paris ; a consummate knowledge of art from Italy ; besides an accordion, and a watch, not larger than a Lima bean, from Geneva on Lake Leman. " My intercourse with the aristocracy of England never allowed me to breathe there, what I am now about to tell you in confidence," said Mr. William Bullwinkle, pulling his rag of a moustache over his under lip ; but when I was presented to the Queen, my keen eye of observance de tected a slight tremor in Her Majesty, and when I kissed her hand I am certain it trembled a little. I also caught her eye afterwards, at the opera, which she withdrew at once ; I am sure of this, for I saw it plain as day, through my lorgnette. But not wishing, as an American, to be mixed up with any scandal of the court," he added, drum ming upon his cheek with his fingers, " I took leave of the ORANGE BLOSSOMS. 7l) white cliiFs of Albion sooner than perhaps I otherwise might have desired/' The expression upon my cousin's face, while Mr. Bull- winkle delivered himself in this gay and festive manner, was absolutely fiendish. Not so with Fanny Hazleton. During the rest of the evening, she kept close by the side of her guest, and at parting, when the sisters Bullwinkle helped their brother on with his coat, and tied the worsted around his neck, her fair fingers, as if emulous of the duty, re-tied it, to keep him comfortable. " How did you like Mr. Bullwinkle ? " said I to Kow~ ley, as we walked towards the office. " He's a perfect jackass ! " answered my cousin with a burst of indignation. " Did you hear him make a pun ? " " Oh ! him, yes ; half a dozen." " Any of 'em good ? " " Good ? immense ! " this was uttered in a tone in tended to be cool and sarcastic in the highest degree. " What of his literary ability ? " " Chaff ! chaff ! a literary chiffonier, who hooks out of the mire decayed scraps of learning, and thinks them won derfully fine in the new gloss he puts upon them." " He has written a great deal." 80 ORANGE BLOSSOMS. ' Yes, no doubt ; his fecundity is astonishing ; I should call him a literary rabbit." This was terribly bitter. " What is the matter, Rowley ? " "Nothing at all." " They say he fences beautifully." "/ would like to trifJiim witli a small-sword." If Fanny Hazleton's conduct surprised me on that Friday evening, what did I think of it when a few weeks had rolled by, and her acquaintance with the ci-devant Bearer of Dispatches became strengthened by time ? At every evening party, Mr. Bullwinkle was her escort ; if she danced at all, which she did but rarely, Mr. Bullwinkle was her partner ; if she went to a concert or the theatre, there was Mr. Bullwinkle as well. Meantime, Rowley, instead of being the gay, good-humored cavalier, the life and soul of the social circle, he used to be in old times, was now downcast and spiritless ; following Fanny with his eyes every where, yet scarcely venturing to address her at all ; a shadow of his former self ; no longer an object of adulation, but the subject of pity, or ridicule, or both. This will never do, my cousin ! Rowley's mother at this time issued cards of in vitation for a small party, to be given in honor of her niece Isabel ORANGE BLOSSOMS. 81 Bassett, who had just arrived from Baltimore. Bell Bas- sett was a sprightly, amiable girl of about twenty ; exceed ingly pretty withal, and as witty and quick as she was good-natured. She was engaged to a gentleman of her native city, but this was a secret known only in the family. We had been very good friends, and soon after her arrival I made her acquainted with the unfortunate position aof my cousin's affairs. The result was, after several consultations, a plot, the success of which mainly depended upon my cou sin Kowley. " Do you remember," said I to him one day, " that scene in Cooper's novel, where the prairie is on fire, and the means by which the old trapper, Leather Stocking, saves himself and his companions from the terrible fate which threatens them ? " " Yes," my cousin paid little attention to what I was saying. " Do you remember what Leather Stocking says on that occasion ? " "No." " We must make fire fight fire ! " "Well, what then?" " Fanny Hazleton " "Well." 4* 82 ORANGE BLOSSOMS. " Pretends to like Mr. Bullwinkle." " More than pretence, I fancy/' " We shall see." "How?" " You must fall in love with Bell Bassett. " Nonsense." Ck And Bell is already prepared to be dreadfully in love with you." " What are you talking about ?" " Something that concerns you. Listen. Fanny Hazle- ton either does, or does not, love this literary chiffonier. If she do not, then you may yet win her ; but if you were to propose at the present time you would only be certain of one thing " "A refusal!" "Prompt. If you gain her, it will not be by coming- like an abject, now. She has too much spirit herself to overlook the want of it in you. You must stand with her on level ground. You must once more become gay, light- hearted, cheerful. You must convince her that such a thing as this Mr. Bullwinkle could not, by any possibility, give you an uneasy thought, where she is concerned. If her apparent liking for him be serious, it is enough to awaken all your pride and contempt. Do you think him more worthv of her than vourself ? " ORANGE BLOSSOMS. 83 " I do not think him capable of feeling as I do towards " A man made up of pretence " " And meanness " " Spoiled by those foolish sisters " " A milk-sop." " Who knows as much about poetry as a cat does of astronomy " " The jackass." " Not a thing that is genuine about him " " Except his conceit." " And he to aspire to Fanny Hazleton ? No, no, Bow- ley, I do not, cannot believe she entertains a thought of ever having such a man. Come now, do you believe it?" " I do not know what to believe." " Then we must find out what to believe. We must get at the true state of the case. Put yourself in my hands show every attention to Bell Bassett treat Fanny po litely, very politely, but as if her actions did not weigh upon your heart a feather. Then we will soon find out what is best to be done." " Impossible. I cannot be guilty of duplicity." " Do not make up your mind too hastily." " I am resolved." 84 ORANGE BLOSSOMS. And so ended my conference with Rowley. The party came off in due time, and there was Fanny, accompanied by Mr. Bullwinkle, whom she had asked to wait upon her. This was rather unexpected, as the fami lies did not visit. Rowley was pale with anger, his eyes sparkled with indignation for an instant, and then he was perfectly cool and self-possessed. He never appeared so well as he did then, so graceful and dignified. I saw Fanny once or twice looking at him quite intently. But the chief object of interest that evening was cousin Bell. She was one of those miraculous creatures who seem to possess the power of creating as many charms as the occa sion may require. This evening she was bewitching. Fanny Hazleton was completely eclipsed. Rowley had given Bell a little locket which she wore in her belt, and took good care to whisper one or two, that it was the gift of her cousin. Then she was by his side whenever an op portunity presented itself ; she petted him ; got him inter ested in old stories of the times when they were children ; followed him with her eyes wherever he went ; sat down disconsolate when he danced with any other person ; in fact, acted with such consummate skill, it created just what she wanted and that was a great deal of sur mise. ORANGE BLOSSOMS. 85 Bell sang very prettily ; her voice was of that sympa thetic kind, more admirable and rare, than those whose chief excellence consists in having a good natural organ skilfully cultivated. She had just finished a little Italian air when I overheard Mr. Bullwinkle observe, in his face tious way " Oh, very good, very good. I suppose she sings in Eyetalion because she's afraid to trust herself with the English. It is better to run the risk of mispronouncing a language we don't understand, than to take that risk with a language we do." If my thoughts were at all translated by the look I gave Mr. Bullwinkle, when I heard this specimen of his wit, I am sure he could not have felt much complimented. He laughed, however, in a very silly way, and took no notice of it. As for Fanny, she blushed deep scarlet. It was now Kowley's turn to sing, for Bell would take no denial ; so he began that famous old song, by George Wither : " Shall I, wasting in despair, Die because another's fair ? Or my cheeks look pale with care Because another's rosy are ? Be she fairer than the day, Or the flowery meads in May ; 86 ORANGE BLOSSOMS. If she be not BO to me, What care I how fair she be ? " Fanny's eyes rested on her lap the blush deepened. " Shall a woman's virtues move Me to perish for her love ? Or, her well-deservings known, Make me to forget my own ? Be she with that goodness blest, Which may merit name of 'best ;' If she be not such to me, What care I how good she be ? " The bouquet in Fanny's hand trembled as if a little wind stirred the flowers. " Great, or good, or kind, or fair, I will ne'er the more despair ; If she love me, this believe I will die ere she shall grieve. If she slight me when I woo, I will scorn and let her go ; If she be not fit for me, What care I for whom she be ? " Mr. Bullwinkle's lamp flickered in the socket, and finally went out. Fanny Hazleton saw only one person in the rooms, and that was my cousin Rowley. But the story is not yet told. ORANGE BLOSSOMS. . 87 Bell made so many engagements for her cousin, was so often with him at the balls, concerts, parties ; that the " surmise " grew into a general belief. One day I received a note. It was from Fanny Hazle- ton. A poor family, in great distress, had a sick child, and she wanted me to prescribe for it. " As I do not know the number of the house," it said, " call for me and I will go with you. P. S. Come yourself." I did prescribe for the sick child, and then walked home with Fanny. " Your cousin is going to be married ? " she said in a tremulous voice. " Who says so ? " " Every body. He is engaged to Miss Bassett." "Everybody says you are engaged to Mr. Bullwinkle." " What, him ? I detest him ! But your cousin and Miss Bassett ? " " Miss Bassett is engaged " " It is true then ? " " To a gentleman in Baltimore, Mr. Savage." Fanny threw back her hood, and looked up at the sky, as if a whole troop of cherubs had flocked out of the zenith. " Now, my dear, dear cousin, go at once to Fanny Hazleton's, and do not let the grass grow under your feet ! 88 ORANGE BLOSSOMS. And Kowley did go, and six months after, I saw the wreath of orange blossoms like a crown of glory over Fanny's fair forehead ; and Bell Bassett was the prettiest brides maid that ever waited upon bride. "And the white-hand ? " " Is a memory like the rose buds ! " BUNKER HILL: 3to dblft-Cime ITT was a starry night in June ; the air was soft and still, When the minute men from Cambridge came, and gathered on the hill : Beneath us lay the sleeping town, around us frowned the fleet, But the pulse of freemen, not of slaves, within our bosoms beat, And every heart rose high with hope, as fearlessly we said, " We will be numbered with the free, or numbered with' the dead ! " " Bring out the line to mark the trench, and stretch it on the sward ! " The trench is marked the tools are brought we utter not a word, But stack our guns, then fall to work, with mattock and with spade, A thousand men with sinewy arms, and not a sound is made : So still were we, the stars beneath, that scarce a whisper fell ; We heard the red-coat's musket click, and heard him cry, " All's well!" 90 BUNKER HILL I AN OLD-TIME BALLAD. And here and there a twinkling port, reflected on the deep, In many a wavy shadow showed their sullen guns asleep. Sleep on, thou bloody hireling crew ! in careless slumber lie ; The trench is growing broad and deep, the breastwork broad and high: No striplings we, but bear the arms that held the French in check, The drum that beat at Louisburgh, and thundered in Quebec ! And thou, whose promise is deceit, no more thy word we'll trust, Thou butcher Gage ! thy power and thee we'll humble in the dust ; Thou and thy tory minister have boasted to thy brood, "The lintels of the faithful shall be sprinkled with our blood !" But though these walls those lintels be, thy zeal is all in vain, A thousand freeman shall rise up for every freeman slain, And when o'er trampled crowns and thrones they raise the mighty shout, This soil their Palestine shall be ! their altar this redoubt ! See how the morn is breaking ! the red is in the sky, The mist is creeping from the stream that floats in silence by, The Lively's hull looms through the fog, and they our works have spied, For the ruddy flash and round shot part in thunder from her side ; And the Falcon and the Cerberus make every bosom thrill, With gun and shell, and drum and bell, and boatswain's whistle shrill; But deep and wider grows the trench, as spade and mattock ply, For we have to cope with fearful odds, and the time is drawing nigh ! Up with the pine-tree banner ! Our gallant Prescott stands Amid the plunging shells and shot, and plants it with his hands ; BUNKER HILL I AN OLD-TIME BALLAD. 1)1 Up with the shout ! for Putnam comes upon his reeking bay, With bloody spur and foamy bit, in haste to join the fray : And Pomeroy, with his snow-white hairs, and face all flush and sweat, Unscathed by French and Indian, wears a youthful glory yet. But thou, whose soul is glowing in the summer of thy years, Unvanquishable Warren, thou (the youngest of thy peers) Wert born, and bred, and shaped, and made to act a patriot's part, And dear to us thy presence is as heart's blood to the heart ! Well may ye bark, ye British wolves ! with leaders such as they, Not one will fail to follow where they choose to lead the way As once before, scarce two months since, we followed on your track, And with our rifles marked the road ye took in going back : Ye slew a sick man in his bed ; ye slew, with hands accursed, A mother nursing, and her blood fell on the babe she nursed : By their own doors our kinsmen fell and perished in the strife ; But as we hold a hireling's cheap, and dear a freeman's life, By Tanner brook and Lincoln bridge, before the shut of sun, We took the recompense we claimed a score for every one ! Hark ! from the town a trumpet ! The barges at the wharf Are crowded with the living freight and now they're pushing off : With clash and glitter, trump and drum, in all its bright array, Behold the splendid sacrifice move slowly o'er the bay ! And still and still the barges fill, and still across the deep, Like thunder-clouds along the sky, the hostile transports sweep ; And now they're forming at the Point and now the lines advance, We see beneath the sultry sun their polished bayonets glance, We hear a-near the throbbing drum, the bugle challenge ring, Quick bursts, and loud, the flashing cloud, and rolls from wing to wing, 92 BUNKER HILL : AN OLD-TIME BALLAD. But on the height our bulwark stands, tremendous in its gloom, As sullen as a tropic sky, and silent as the tomb. And so we waited till we saw, at scarce ten rifles' length, The old vindictive Saxon spite, in all its stubborn strength ; When sudden, flash on flash, around the jagged rampart burst From every gun the livid light upon the foe accurst : Then quailed a monarch's might before a free-born people's ire ; Then drank the sward the veteran's life, where swept the yeoman's fire ; Then, staggered by the shot, we saw their serried columns reel, And fall, as falls the bearded rye beneath the reaper's steel : And then arose a mighty shout that might have waked the dead, " Hurrah ! they run ! the field is won ! " " Hurrah ! the foe is fled ! " And every man hath dropped his gun to clutch a neighbor's hand, As his heart kept praying all the while for Home and Native Land. Thrice on that day we stood the shock of thrice a thousand foes ; And thrice that day within our lines the shout of victory rose ! And though our swift fire slackened then, and reddening in the skies, We saw, from Charlestown's roofs and walls, the flamy columns rise ; Yet while we had a cartridge left, we still maintained the fight, Nor gained the foe one foot of ground upon that blood-stained height. What though for us no laurels bloom, nor o'er the nameless brave No sculptured trophy, scroll, nor hatch, records a warrior-grave ? What though the day to us was lost ? Upon that deathless page The everlasting charter stands, for every land and age ! For man hath broke his felon bonds and cast them in the dust, And claimed his heritage divine, and justified the trust ; BUNKER HILL : AN OLD-TIME BALLAD. 93 While through his rifted prison-bars the hues of freedom pour O'er every nation, race, and clime, on every sea and shore Such glories as the patriarch viewed, when, 'mid the darkest skies, He saw, above a ruined world, the Bow of Promise rise. A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. " SUCCESS is wisdom : If the result be happy we have been wise. 1 ' MRS. MYKA MASON. TN all great actions two elements are indispensable. First the task must be exceedingly difficult in order to develope those heroic qualities fortitude and perse verance. Secondly The result must be an equivalent for the labor ; a consideration which appears to have been over looked by all legislators, or it might have prevented most of the battles, massacres, burnings and bloodshed since the beginning of the world. Whether or no I have succeeded in gaining the latter, posterity shall judge, and as regards the former, I can only ask of those who have any knowledge of the Babylonii, if any thing in the shape of information is not exceedingly diffi cult to get at among that sage and taciturn people ? In 96 A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. fact, a genuine Long-Islander, like one of his native oys ters, is held to be of little value unless he can keep his mouth shut. Judge then of the labor it has cost to bring into the world this true and impartial history. To search the misspelt records of the township ; to dive into num berless authorities ; to collect the waifs and floating straws of tradition ; to collate, examine, sift, weigh, accept, refuse and discriminate among these heterogeneous materials, has been to me a labor of love ; and fearing that no other per son will ever undertake the arduous task for the benefit of posterity, with much brain-work and wasting of the midnight oil, I have at last perfected this invaluable work. Unfortunately there are no authentic antediluvian rec ords of Babylon. Neither do we find a distinct and reliable account of such a place among the travels of those ancient navigators, the Phoenicians ; but from the known habits of that mighty hunter, Nimrod, it is but reasonable to sup pose that after the dispersion of the builders of the tower of Babel, he would be likely to look out some place to gratify his peculiar tastes, and the South Side affording him every facility, he might naturally settle there for the remainder of his days. Nor is this merely a matter of conjecture, for there is a vague tradition floating around A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. 97 the village to that effect, the most powerful argument in its favor being this : " If Nimrod did not go to Babylon, where did he go ? " Until this question is satisfactorily answered, I shall claim the great Assyrian as the founder of the ancient village of Babylon. Having thus settled the postdiluvian era of the dis covery of this ancient and renowned village, there still re mains, in mysterious obscurity, a vast interval. I shall not, after the manner of many historians, attempt to bridge over this dark period with idle conjecture, but rather let it remain a shadowy and fathomless sea in silent sublimity, adding beauty by contrast to the lifelike picture of a later and more eventful age. Babylon is bounded north by the railroad, south by the great South Bay, east by Coquam or Skoquam Creek, and west by Sunkwam or Great Creek : whether these fertilizing streams ever received the names of the Euphrates and Tigris is not known. Yet it is but reasonable to sup pose that the Chaldean monarch gave them these titles in honor of the ancient city of Confusion. For several thou sand years the descendants of the great hunter occupied the territory bequeathed to them in peaceful security. The Syrian merged in the red man ; his very language was un- 98 A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. known, his origin forgotten ; the beautiful oriental Chaldaic was changed into the barbarous dialect of the Massapequas, and a rude tribe, " a mere handful of men/' was all that re mained of a nation whose greatness had o'ershadowed the earth. But the lapse of centuries had not altered the natural beauties of the land. The primitive forest still extended to the verge of the green meadows that bordered the bay. The antlered deer stooped to drink from the clear streams that wound their sinuous way through the shadowy woods. The patient beaver "built his little Venice" upon their banks, while the elk upheaved his proud neck like a mon arch, and bounded away at the scream of the wild cat or the cry of the rapacious wolf. The swan rippled with her snowy bosom the placid waters of the bay ; the pelican reared its rude nest amid the pines, and the plumed and painted Indian in his slender canoe floated like a dream upon the transparent bosom of the waters. The Massape quas, a peaceful piscivorous nation, had but a faint idea of the glories of war ; a night excursion to steal some trifle from the neighboring Secatouges or the Shinecocks (a tribe noted for anointing their bodies with the fat of the opos sum), or the laughter-loving Merrikokes, was the extent of their predatory forays. A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. 99 Even these night rambles were unsuited to the genius of a quiet people ; retaliation soon quenched this warlike spirit ; and like the Babylonii of modern days, they pre ferred making raids upon the peaceful inhabitants of the bay for in those days salmon did abound, yea, plen tiful as shirks and blue fish ; and many a black canoe, with the spearman standing out in bold relief by the light of his pine-knot torch, could be seen, where now the solitary tower on Fire Island casts its menacing glare upon the waves. Such was the enviable condition of the territory of Babylon or " Sunkwam," as it was then denominated, and so it remained until the discovery of the island of Manhattan, and the landing of the pilgrim fathers and mothers upon the famous rock at New Plymouth. It is not my purpose . to repeat these familiar portions of the history of the new world. The rise and fall of the Dutch dynasty, and the colonial government of the Puritans are well known to every man, woman and child in the country. The patient Netherlander slowly populated the peaceful city of the Manhattoes. The Pilgrims took possession successively of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Khode Island. But Sunk wam was reserved for greater things, and therefore her day came later than the rest. It was not until the middle of 100 A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. the seventeenth century, that the first irruption of tin- white men into the territory of the Massapequas took place. The western end of the island nearest New- Am sterdam had been deliberately settled by the phlegmatic Dutchmen, while their more mercurial brethren had ex tended themselves over the largest portion of the island, from Montauk Point to the present western boundaries of Suffolk county. At the latter place an imaginary line had been drawn defining the limits of the respective settle ments, but in 1642 a party of Orientals started from the town of Lynn, and, with true Yankee audacity, squatted themselves at Cow Bay, directly within the boundaries of the Dutch territory. Now Governor Keift was a little man, and not over brave for a governor, but like many other little men he could do a great deal of fighting at a distance. So he forthwith dispatched a rascally bailiff, one Cornelius Van Tienhoven, with directions to capture this band of "infamous Yankees," who had dared to come (from Lynn) " between the wind and his nobility." Whereupon the said Cornelius took with him six good men and true, and after a laborious journey of three weeks, five days and twenty-three hours, arrived in sight of the embryo colony. Here he reposed for two days and a half to recover his wind, and then taking off his coat and tying his suspenders A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. 101 around his capacious abdomen, started off alone to take the settlement by storm, leaving his valiant army behind as a " corps de reserve." As luck would have it, just as he reached the brow of the little hill which rises before Cow Bay, his foot slipped in something, and he rolled down the hill toward the ill-fated colony. When the Yankees beheld this huge Dutch avalanche coming down, and threat ening to demolish the whole of them in a twinkling, they were seized with a horrible panic, and ran away as if the devil was after them.* Then, as is the custom with puis sant conquerors, did the aforementioned Cornelius take a view of the village, which, by the law of nations, had again become a possession of the States General, and twisting his mighty moustache, seize and carry off with him the spoils and prisoners of war, namely : an old woman with the fever and ague, a yellow-headed baby with goose berry eyes, together with a bag of corn meal and a huge rasher of pork, and march back to Nieuw-Amsterdam * Here let me caution my readers against the account given by DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER in the History of New- York, of this memorable event. I do most heartily believe every thing that he relates, except when he speaks of the Yankees, but there, methinks, his prejudice has warped his accuracy. Beside, how could "STOFFEL BRINKERIIOFF," as he asserts, "trudge through Nineveh and Babylon, and Jericho and Patchogue, and the mighty town of Quog, on his way to Oyster Bay ? " He might as well have tried to get to Albany by the way of Coney Island ! 102 A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. like a modern Mexican hero, fresh from the " Halls of the Monte/uina s." But this little circumstance was productive of a great result, for one of the aforesaid Yankees, Hosea Carl by A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. 103 name, ran straight across the island and never drew breath until he came in sight of the pleasant waters of the Great South Bay. Here he -beheld the wigwams of the renowned Massapequas, and finding them to be an indolent devil- may-care set of savages, forthwith took them under his kindly protection. It was on this memorable day, namely, the twenty-third of May, 1642, that the first blue-fish was eaten by a white man within the precincts of Sunk- wam, or Sunquam as it is sometimes erroneously spelt. Nor must I omit to relate that this same Hosea Carl had in his waistcoat pocket some pumpkin seeds, which he planted without delay, for the pumpkin is the mystic sym bol of the Yankees, and the planting thereof gives as good a title to the soil as right of possession by flag-staff, or any other ingenious invention by which barbarous tribes are taught to respect the rights and claims of civilized nations. Being thus in a manner under the shade of his own vine and fig-tree, Hosea sent a faithful copperhead, Squidko by name, to hunt up his wife, who had fled before the terrible splutter-damns of Cornelius Von Tienhoven, like a struck wild-fowl at the sound of a rusty gun. The daguerreotype painted upon the memory of Squidko was a perfect likeness, and in a few days the hapless fugi tive was found. Hosea then made a " clearing," and before 104 A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. many years a small tribe of musquito-bitten, saffron-headed Hoseas, surrounded the parental clapboards. About two years after this memorable epoch, certain Indians who had been committing various depredations, were attacked by the famous Captain John Underbill, in the palisado called Fort Neck, about eight miles from Babylon, and utterly routed with much slaughter. Now this said John Under- hill was not only a terrible fellow among the savages, but he used to raise the devil's delight in every village where he happened to be quartered, for he was a great favorite with the fair sex (which is always the case with warriors and other noted characters), and although doubtless an innocent man, yet the viperous tongue of slander will assail the purest and the most virtuous. Hence we find it recorded in Thompson's admirable History of Long Island, out of Hutchinson, that "before a great assembly at Boston on a, lecture day and in the court-house, he sat upon a stool of repentance, with a white cap on his head ; and with many deep sighs, a ivoful countenance, and abundance of tears, owned his wicked way of life, and besought the church to have compassion on him, and de liver him out of the hands of Satan." Which after all was only a general and not a specific acknowledgment of any one sin with which he had been charged, for doth he not A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. 105 affirm when he had been privately dealt with for inconti- nency That " the woman being very young and beautiful, and withal of a jovial spirit and behaviour, he did daily frequent her house, and was divers times found there alone with her, the door being locked on the inside, and confessed that it was ill, because it had the appearance of evil in it ; but that the woman was in great trouble of mind and sore temptation, and that he resorted to her to comfort her ; and that when the door was found locked upon them they were in private prayer together ? " an explanation which ought to be perfectly satisfactory to every reasonable mind. Moreover, doth not the following extract from his letter to his " Worthee and Beloved friend, Hansard Knowles," clearly show that the times, and not the man were in error ? " They propounded that I was to be examined for car nally looking after one Mistris Miriam Wilbore, at the lec ture in Boston when Master Shepherd expounded. This Mistris Wilbore hath since been dealt with for coming to that lecture with a pair of wanton open-worked gloves, slit at the thumbs and fingers, for the purpose of taking snuff. For, as Master Cotton observed, for what end should these vain openings be, but for the intent of taking filthy snuff? and he quoted Gregory Nazianzen upon good works. How 106 A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. the use of the good creature tobacco, can be an offence, I cannot see. Master Cotton said, ' Did you not look upon Mistris Wilbore ? ' I confessed that I did. Master Peters 'then sayd, ' Why did you not look at sister Newell, or sister Upham ? ' I sayd ' Yerelie, they are not desyrable women, as to temporal graces/ Then Hugh Peters and all cryed, i It is enough, he hath confessed/ and so passed excommunica tion." Now I would like to know what would become of our modern church-gallants if they were liable to be ex communicated upon such charges ? Having thus redeemed the character of this jolly bach elor from the foul aspersions of a cynical age, it but re mains for me to say, that from him sprang the present race of Underbills, who are to be found by every shady hill-side on Long Island ; men celebrated all over the face of the earth for their morality and bravery. The first Yankee discoverer of Sunkwam did mot remain there long without having neighbors. The Smiths, the Seamans, the Hicks, the Willetts, the Coopers and the Udells, planted themselves side by side with the primitive adventurer ; and about this time the family of the Snedi- cors, springing up earth-born, the Lord-knows-how, began to overrun the country like a wild cucumber- vine, and finally shot up in a single night in the hitherto purely A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. 107 Yankee village of Sunkwam. The Orientals initiated the Indians in the mysteries of ruin, gunpowder, pumpkin- pies and jewsharps, and the Indians rewarded their instruc tors with plentiful grants of land and prodigious clam bakes. On the fourth of July, 1657, Tackapausha, the sachem of the Massapequas, made a treaty with the Dutch Governor, by which Sunkwam became nominally a province of the Nieuw Netherlandts ; but the conquest of .the latter place, in 1664, by the English, restored the settlers to that liberty which they had lost only in name. And now peace and serenity was with Sunkwam. The conical wig wams of the savages were giving place to the clapboard castles of the industrious Yankees. Here and there a snowy sail careered over the bay where erst had been seen only the bark canoe of the aborigine. Population thrived, agriculture flourished : the sportive cucumber meandered among the green corn, the peaceful pumpkin rolled its fair round proportions on the sunny slopes ; and the commerce of Sunkwam spread like a battalia of white moths over the neighboring bays and inlets. Such was the happy condition of Babylon an hundred and fifty years ago ; it is a picture I am never weary of contemplating. Let me lay aside my pen, and look upon it with the delight of a father who gazes upon his first- 108 A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. born with those exquisite feelings known only to the paren tal heart ! It was toward the close of the seventeenth century that the redoubtable Captain Kidd, of pious memory, dropped anchor off the fertile shores of Long Island. The purpose of the expedition, which was to put an end to the robberies upon the high seas ; the fruit of his experience with these modem " Vikings," which ended in his becoming a pirate himself ; and his end at Execution Dock in 1701, are well known to every one ; but on board of his vessel he had many innocent persons, who were subordinate officers, sea men, and the like, shipped with no other motive than that of serving their king, the press-gang, and their country. Among those who had become pirates by compulsion was the sailing-master of the vessel, one Jacob O'Lynn ; prob ably a lineal descendant of that famous Bryan O'Lynn, who had - " No breeches to wear, So he bought him a sheep-skin to make him a pair ; With the woolly side out and the leather side in, 4 They'll be cool in warm weather.' says BRYAN Be that as it may, Lynn (for he was an Englishman, and had dropped the Hibernic ' ; ) was a warm-hearted, double-fisted, square-chested sea-dog, who did not care the A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. 109 toss of a biscuit who he served under, if there was plenty of fighting and the liquor was good. His chief amusement was playing on an enormous conch-shell, given him by some princess on the coast of Africa, who had taken a fancy to his broad shoulders and manly proportions ; and his favorite position was to get astride of the bowsprit, blowing his enormous conch like a jolly triton playing " Come o'er the Sea " before Queen Amphitrite ; from whence he received the name of " Conch Lynn," since cor rupted into " Conklin." It is necessary to be particular in these matters, because they are the stepping-stones of all true history. But this said Conch Lynn, disliking exceedingly the customs of those sea anti-renters, the pirates, took an opportunity while Kidd was asleep, after a hard day's drink ing, strapped his beloved conch-shell around his neck, filled his pockets with doubloons and jewels, dropped overboard, swam ashore, and landed high and dry on the beach at Fire Island. Here he blew a terrific blast upon his conch- shell in honor of his safe arrival, the sound of which killed a whole flock of snipe who were skippereering along the beach ; then turning a somerset in his joy, and making telegraphic signals with his legs, whereby he lost many jewels and other valuables out of his jacket-pockets, he swam and waded across the bay, and finally landed safe 110 A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. at Sunkwam. Here he was sumptuously entertained by the inhabitants, and royally feasted upon skillipots and snappers, beaver-tail, baked quohaugs, blue-fish, moss- bunkers, and other delicacies, washed down with copious libations jof switchel and hard cider ; and being of a do mestic turn of mind, he took possession of a deserted wigwam, hired a buxom-looking squaw for a housekeeper, and in the fulness of his heart kept up an infernal blarting upon his conch-shell from morning till night. This hideous concerto was more than the Sunkwamites had bargained for ; accordingly, in a very eloquent remonstrance, now in the possession of the Historical Society of Babylon, they requested him " right lovingely either to cease blowinge y aforesaid konke, whereby y e peace of y e community had beene much endamaged, or to take his d d shell and blow it without y 6 jurisdiction of y e colony." As might be expected, the jolly sailing-master took offence at this, and shaking the dust off his shoes, departed from the place as mad as a bear with a sore head. After trudging for two or three miles across the swamps and pine-barrens, he turned round and gave them a parting blast upon his sea- trumpet that sounded like the famous horn of Orlando at the dolorous rout of Roncesvalles ; then settling himself in the interior, he married out of sheer spite, and begat the A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. Ill numerous race of Conklins, who are renowned for blowing their own trumpets even to this day. Nay, it is asserted that the sound of his conch-shell can be heard even now swelling upon the wind across the bay whenever there is a storm brewing to the southward. Still the little settlement thrived in spite of these untoward mishaps, and it was christened Huntington- South, in honor of the great hunter who had founded it. It is delightful to review the manners and customs of this little colony. Every one assisted his neighbor ; the laws were administered with strict impartiality, and I have quoted from the aforesaid " History of Long Island " the following record as a specimen of what evenhanded justice was in those patriarchal days. " Town-Court, Oct. 23, 1662. Stephen Jervice, an attorney in behalf of James Chichester, plf., vs. Tho. Scudder, deft., action of y e case and of batery. Deft, says that he did his endeavor to save y e pigg from y e wolfF, but knows no hurt his dog did it ; 'and as for y e sow, he denys y e charge. Touching y e batery, striking y e boye, says he did strike ye e boye, but it was for abusing his daughter. Y e verdict of y e jury is, that deft.'s dog is not fitt to be cept, but y e acsion fails for want of testimony ; but touch ing y e batery, y e jury's verdict pass for plff., that deft, pay 112 A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. him ten shillings for striking y e boye, and y e plff. to pay five shillings for his boye's incivility/ Having thus found a verdict against the dog, the plaintiff and the defendant, the jury were allowed to proceed to their respective homes. And now, even as a laborer after a hard day's work stretches himself and slumbers in tranquillity, did the little town of Huntington-South enjoy a long period of repose. The old settlers were gathered in the silent folds where all must slumber the Indians melted from the land like snow before the sun in April. Piece by piece the land had been purchased by the whites ; nor must I omit to mention the story of Sally Higbee, " who didd receive a notable tract e of land from one Smackatagh, by reasonne of a kisse which he did begge of herr, and which she bestowde in considera- cion of havinge the said lande given tow herr by the sal vage ; " and also the manner in which one Jones did out- jump an Indian for a wager (the latter staking forty square miles of good land against a barrel of hard cider), and being a springy varlet, and fall of quicksilver, did thereby win the same from him by a foot and a half. With the excep tion of such events, Huntington-South slumbered on for above a century. The war of the revolution broke out and rolled like a sea of fire around her scrub-oak barriers ; but A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. 113 she knew it not, and even to this day, it is said, some of the inhabitants pray devoutly for the restoration of King Charles the Second, of blessed memory. At last the nineteenth century dawned upon the world. Voluminous as are the records of this period, one important circumstance has escaped the notice of every historian. Seizing upon this event with the joy of one who has found a treasure, and scarcely credits the evidence of his senses, I shall forthwith reveal how Sunkwam came to be chris tened by the name it now bears. In 1801, one Nat. Conk- lin (or Conkelynge) kept a store in the village, and trans acted a profitable business with the inhabitants. At the same time an Irishman, Billy Callighan by name, had a similar establishment for the vending of rum, red herrings, tape, tobacco, mackerel, molasses, cod-fish and calicoes. " Huntington-South" had always been a stumbling-block in the way of the native orthographists (I myself have seen more than seventeen different ways of spelling it, every one of them wrong), so this merry little Irishman, in honor of his native city, determined to name it DUBLIN ! But Aunt Phoebe Conklin, a lineal descendant of the doughty Jacob, settled her spectacles firmly upon the tip of her indefatigable nose, took a sharp pinch of snuff out of a testy-looking little box, clapped the box in her side pocket, 114 A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. and with her thumh and fore-finger tightly pinched together, as if she held the weasand of the presumptuous Billy Callighan squeezed between them, declared she would not have it so : " And since the place wants a name," said she, " I'll name it : I'll call it BABYLON ! because there's always so much ' babbling ' going on there ! " And there upon she took out a red bandanna, and sounded a terrific blast with her nose, that was like unto the sound of the mighty conch-shell of her valorous ancestor. So the village became Babylon by sound of trumpet ! Nor must I now omit to describe the nominatrix of this puissant village. She was a tall, spare, mathematical-look ing lady, with a face like a last will and testament, with amen ! written in every corner. Moreover, she was bedight in a crimp-cap and white short-gown, with a black silk kerchief pinned crossways over her neck, and a quilted calico petticoat, that by dint of repeated washing looked like the ghost of a defunct dolphin. Meanwhile, one Thompson, who was likewise an aspi rant for fame, must needs have his say in the matter ; and being of a milky disposition, of wonderful good-nature, and wishing every body well in the world, would fain give Ba bylon a more euphonious title ; so he called together all the inhabitants, had a grand "pow-wow" at his house, and A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. 115 spent several dollars in the purchase of sundry gallons of corn-whiskey, apple-jack and New-England rum, with which the company became wonderfully mellow. Then, after much preliminary backing-and-lling, he proposed in a terribly long-winded speech, which the limits of the work will not permit me to give entire " that the village, being a quiet, peaceful little place, where all were i Unitas Fratrum,' should be henceforth known and denominated as HARMONY ; " which was unanimously ratified upon the spot by all present. This important ceremony over, the Harmonians proceeded to the more serious business of the night, and took unto themselves sundry juleps, slings, tod dies, etc. Then, according to the records of the time, did they become bucked, boozy, bunged up, corned, sprung, swipesy, swizzled, soaked, smashed, slewed, sewed-up, sick, mellow, maudlin, hot, funny, toddied, top-heavy, half- snapped, keeled-up, drunken, inebriated, intoxicated, one eye open, in liquor, weeping, shouting, swearing, roaring, 'flabbergasted, all talking at once, kicked, cuffed, torn, fisted ; in a word, they made as infernal an uproar as ever had been made at the building of the veritable tower of Babel upon the plains of Shinar ! But how vain are hu man efforts to contend with fate ! The sun rose in the morning, and breaking several panes of glass in the win- 116 A CHRONICLE OF THE VILLAGE OF BABYLON. dows of the east, looked through and smiled in peaceful serenity upon the slumbering village. And lo and behold ! it was BABYLON still, and so it has remained even to the present day. Having thus brought this philosophical and philological history to the beginning of the present century, I lay aside my pen. I pass over, as apocryphal, the popular rumor of Babylon having been once named " Dog- ville ; " but justice to the Babylonii demands that I should affirm, upon the word of an historian, that since the unfor tunate issue of the " christening," they have continued and still remain A STRICTLY TEMPERANCE PEOPLE. THE SEASONS. A ROUND, around, around, around, *- The snow is on the frozen ground ; River and rill Are frore and still, The warm sun lies on the cold side hill, And the trees in the forest sound, As their ice-clasped arms wave to and fro When they shiver their gyves with a stalwart blow. Slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly Comes the Spring, Like a maiden holy ; Her hlue eyes hid in a wimple of gray, But a hopeful smile on her face alway ; Through the rich, brown earth bursts the pale, green shoot From the milk-white threads of the sensitive root, 118 THE SEASONS. Like a joy that is fragile and fleeting ; And the little house wren, in his plain, drab coat, Holds forth, in a plaintive, querulous note, Like a Quaker at yearly meeting. Of Autumn, gorgeous, sombre, and sere, I shall probably write at the close of the year, But at present, the jubilant Summer is here All in love with her half bursting bodice of green, Just disclosing that Kasselas valley between ; And her farthingale purfled all over With violets, strawberries, lilies, and tulips, Intermingled with mint-sprigs, suggestive of juleps, And suggestive of living in clover ; Of a lid-shutting breeze in the shadow of trees, Of love in a cottage and lamb and green peas, Of claret and ice, chicken-curry and rice, And lobster and lettuce, and every thing nice, Of fresh milk and a baby, And butter, and cheese, And a thousand affinitive blessings like these. The Summer, joy-bringer ! is warm on my cheek, It blooms on the blossom, it breathes in the rose, And if nothing occurs, in the course of a week, I shall be where the pond-lily blows : THE SEASONS. 119 Where the wild rose, and willow, are glassed in the pool, Where the mornings, and evenings, are fragrant and cool, Where the breeze from old Ocean sweeps over the bay, And the board is six shillings a day ! OLD BOOKS. T LOVE old books. It is to get below the transitory surface of the present, the alluvial stratum of literature, to stand upon the primitive rock, the gray, and ancient granite of the early world. It is to commune with the Spirit of the Past, to roll back the universe through cycle and epicycle. The haze of antiquity hangs over a collec tion of old books, in which the shapes of the departed are reflected, like the gigantic shadows on the Brocken. Ee- prints have none of it you lose the vital elixir in the transmutation. Here lies great Hollingshead ! black-letter edition of 1569 (so the colophon tells us), dog's-eared with the weight of three centuries. Did William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, ever bend his sagacious head over these clear pages ? Did Kaleigh ? Bacon ? Essex ? Spen- 122 OLD BOOKS. ser ? Or did Elizabeth, with tears of pity, read the touch ing story of Lady Jane Grey, here painted with such minute fidelity, and turn again to marble when the death- warrant was brought for her signature that was to consign to the block, her kinswoman of Scotland the lovely, royal, Mary Stuart ? Yonder " standard library edition" is a faithful copy, but this book was cotemporary with Shak- speare ; this was extant before the Armada. This volume was read, these identical leaves turned over, ere the first spiral of tobacco smoke wound upward in the clear English air, or Ireland was conscious of its chief national blessing the potato ! I trust it will not be considered pedantic if I aver I love old books because of their quaintness in typography and orthography. Who would like to see sweet, silvery Spenser, or scholastic Burton (great finger-post of an tiquity, pointing to all manner of shady lanes and for gotten by-paths of learning), shorn of their exuberance ? Who feel not, when reading these tawny pages of Tattlers and Spectators (printed in Queen Anne's time) something that recalls vividly Will's Coffee House, and taciturn Ad- dison, and great, little Alexander Pope, and the inexorable satirist of St. Patrick's, and skeptical Bolingbroke, and Richard Steele, hiding from a dirty bailiff in an obscure OLD BOOKS. 123 room, to pen a paragraph haply to pay for his dinner, haply to be admired by all posterity. Whatsoever belongs to Latin and Greek, interested me most at an earlier period of life. As a boy, I looked up to "large-handed Achilles," and Livy's beautiful narra tions, with unfeigned delight. Later in youth, I found new worlds in German literature, in Spanish, Italian ; but never affected much the French. As a man now, in this autumnal season of life, I love best our mother tongue. " Nor scorn not mother tongue, O babes of English breed ! I have of other language seen, and you at full may read, Fine verses trimly wrought, and couched in comely sort, But never I, nor you, I trow, in sentence plain and short, Did yet behold with eye, in any foreign tongue, A higher verse, a statelier style, that may be said or sung, Than in this day indeed, our English verse and rhyme, The grace whereof doth touch the gods, and reach the clouds sometime." Poor Tom Churchyard composed these verses before Shakspeare was born ! Spenser's Fairy Queen was pub lished nineteen years after his death. Almost all we know of English poetry (except Chaucer's) is limited to that written between his time and ours. What was there be fore that period to merit such encomiums ? Surely it is well to inquire. Poor Tom Churchyard ! 124 OLD BOOKS. " Poverty and Poetry his tomb doth inclose, Wherefore, good neighbours, be merry in prose." I love old books. Here lies a folio copy in three vol umes, of Congreve, a matchless specimen of typography ; every letter distinct and delicate, " and poured round all " a broad, creamy margin of immaculate purity. What a commentary upon the text ! Licentious Congreve in the vestments of chastity ! There is a sturdy quarto. Kun it over. Blackstone ! with marginal pen and ink notes by Aaron Burr. What is this underscored ? " In a land of liberty it is extremely dangerous to make a distinct order of the profession of arms." u Emulation, or virtuous ambition is a spring of action which, however dangerous or invidious in a mere republic, or under a des potic sway, will certainly be attended with good effects under a free monarchy." On the title-page is inscribed, csj-ztfafTt. The Blennerhassett conspiracy transpired nine years after, in 1806. Did those little sentences suggest that, or was OLD BOOKS. 125 the thought latent before ? It seems to me the history of Aaron Burr is written in that scratch of his pen. Here, resting against StrangforcTs Camoens, is a Keview of the text of Milton, " by Dr. Zachary Pearce, Bp. of Rochester." So we are informed by an autograph in pale ink, in Elia's clerkly hand. How carefully this book was read by him ! Not an error of the printer (and there are many) but what is corrected ; not a wrong point, comma, or semicolon (and there are many) but what is amended. Incomparable Elia ! Gentle Charles Lamb ! That book is dearer to me than the most sumptuous edition of modern clays even including mine own ! Methinks D'Israeli, in his Chapter on Prefaces, might have noticed those two which stand, like a forlorn hope, in front of yonder towering volumes. Sylvester is one his commentator wrote the other. " And who is Sylvester ? " Gentle reader (I take it you are a lady), doubtless you have read Macaulay's Battle of Ivry ? Du Bartas, a French knight who fought under Henry of Navarre in that battle, laid aside his sword, after the fray, to tell the tale of Ivry with his pen. He also wrote " The Divine Week/' both of which were translated by Joshua Sylvester, a famous English poet, whose works were thought worthy of encomiastic verses by Ben Jonson, Daniel, Davis of 126 OLD BOOKS. Hereford, and many other eminent writers of the time of King James I. The Divine Week is the first rude sketch of Paradise Lost. Yonder book was published when Mil ton was thirteen years old, and printed in the very street in which he lived. " Things unattempted yet in verse or prose," forsooth ! and the prefaces, full of touching appeals to a posterity which, as yet, has scarcely recognized either poet or commentator. This little old Bible was in my grandfather's knapsack at the battle of Bunker Hill. It looks as though it had stood the brunt of the fight. Printed in 1741, by Thomas Watkins, one of his Majesty's printers, to which is added " a collection of Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, for the use, edification and comfort of the saints, in publick and private, especially in New England." The Saints of King George the Second were canonized by King George the Third. Methinks I can see the dissolute soldiery land ing at Moulton's Point, with havoc in their eyes and curses in their hearts, marching toward that redoubt, to be swept down by the steady fire of the New England saints, who, had they been as well provided with powder, as with bibles, might have written the first and last chapter of the revo lution on the bloody page of Bunker Hill, June I7tn, OLD BOOKS. 127 1775. Beside it, clasped in a kind of reverential awe, is "Nathaniel Morton's New England's Memorial, 1669 !" " The Mayflower's Memories of the brave and good " of Bradford and Winslow, and Capt. Miles Standish, as he is always called, and the rest, touch us more nearly when we know that book was handled by their compeers. Is it not like rolling back the curtain of a great drama, to think those pages were lifted from the first printing-press that crossed the Atlantic ? " Sonnets, To Sundry Notes of Musicke, by Mr. Wil liam Shakespeare," in shattered sheepskin !- What can be said of Mr. William Shakspeare ? If his commen tators (including Mr. Verplanck, the most learned, as well as the most philosophical) had left any thing to be said, that stripling volume might suggest there were some things of Shakspeare which had not yet found their way in modern editions. Perhaps my short-sightedness never discovered them therein ? Nevertheless, I have searched diligently. Ked-letter title-pages ! Rubrics of the past century ! Twelve volumes by Dr. Swift, Dr. Arbuthnot, Mr. Pope, and Mr. Gay ! What was young America doing when these were being discussed in the boxes of Will's Coffee- House ? For these books saw the light three-quarters of 128 OLD BOOKS. an age after " The Memorial of Nathaniel Morton, Secre tary to the Court for the Jurisdiction of New Plymouth/' \Vhat was young America doing, while Pope was writing the Dunciad ? and the Mayflower (the ark of a new cove nant) had rotted to the keelson, perhaps an hundred years before. Settling Georgia ! Suffering from the Choctaws ! Receiving that distinguished metaphysician, Dr. George Berkely, afterward Bishop of Cloyne ! And Swift great political economist, amid- the parturient throes of a new world writes" The Power of Time." If neither brass nor marble can withstand The mortal force of Time's destructive- hand ; If mountains sink to vales, if cities die, And less'ning rivers mourn their fountains dry : " When my old Cassock " (said a Welsh divine) " Is out at elbows ; why should I repine ? " I cannot help turning to this old volume of tracts by the Lord Bishop of Cloyne, containing "Odes," "Thoughts on Tar Water," " Essays to prevent the ruin of Great Britain," etc., to quote part of these prophetic lines on " the prospect of planting arts and learning in America." " There shall be sung another golden age, The rise of empire and of arts, The good and great inspiring epic rage, The wisest heads and noblest hearts. OLD BOOKS. 129 u Not such as Europe breeds in her decay ; Such as she bred when fresh and young, When heavenly flame did animate her clay, By future poets shall be sung. " Westward the course of empire takes its way ; The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day ; Time's noblest offspring is the last." I love old books. Those nine volumes of Tristram Shandy, which stand in tarnished gold, like the slender pipes of some Lilliputian organ, are a legend and a mystery. Some thirty years since an old English gentleman came to this country with a choice collection of curious books, among which (it was darkly whispered) there were many from Sterne's library. These were part of that collection, (gift of the gifted C. L. E.) whose various dates indicate, year after year, the progress of the work. Illustrated too by Hogarth's own hand ! Thus should kindred genius go down in loving companionship to posterity. " Fmgmenta Aurea" of Sir John Suckling helps fill the niche, with Cotton, Sedley, Dorset, Etherege, Halifax, and Dr. Donne. Rare companions, mad wags, airy, pathetic, gay, tender, witty, and ludicrous ; jostling, pious John Selden, with his mouth full of aphorisms. 130 OLD BOOKS. " Her feet beneath her petticoat, Like little mice stole in and out, As if they feared the light," sings Sir John ; and his neighbors, lay and clerical, respond (t I can love both fair and brown ; Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays ; Her who loves loneness best, and her who sports and plays ; Her whom the country formed, and whom the town ; Her who believes, and her who tries ; Her who still weeps with spongy eyes, And her who is dry cork, and never cries." Samuel Daniel clasps his brown wings below in mute sympathy with the melancholy Cowley. " Samuel Dan iel/' why should he not bear the names of two prophets ? For when the oracles are dumb Poets prophetical become. I love old books. The yellow leaves spread out before me as a ripened field, and I go along gleaning like Ruth in the sunny fields of Bethlehem. Yet I would not have too many. Large libraries, from the huge folios at the base (grim Titans), rearing aloft, to the small volumes on the upper shelves, a ponderous pyramid of lore, oppress the brain. When I look round upon my shining cohorts the old imperial guard of English literature (with sundry OLD BOOKS. 131 conscripts, promoted to the front ranks) I* feel, with honest pride, how jealous I am that none appear unwor thy of such company. So is it with friends. We like a small and choice collection. After these come books. A friend is worth twenty libraries, yet I hate to lose one book with whom I have been familiar many years. I have not yet forgiven the Curate, Master Barber, arid the Housekeeper, for destroying " Amadis de Gaul, Th' Esplandians, Arthurs, Palmerins, and all The learned library of Don Quixote : " that choice little anthology of rare flowers. New books (unbending vestals) require too much labor in the wooing ; and to go armed with an ivory spatula, like a short, Koman sword, piercing one's way through the spongy leaves of an uncut volume, is an abomination. An old book opens generously ; spreading out its arms, as it were, " wi' a Highland welcome ; " giving " the whole sum Of errant knighthood, with the dames and dwarfs ; The charmed boats, and the enchanted wharfs, The Tristrams, Lanc'lots, Turpins, and the Peers, All the mad Kolands, and sweet Olivers ; To Merlin's marvels, and his Cabal's loss, With the chimera of the Rosie Cross ; 132 OLD BOOKS. Their seals, their characters, hermetic rings, Their jem of riches, and bright stone 1 that brings Invisibility, and strength, and tongues." Yet a young book, at times, is worth the wooing. I have seen such, growing up under mine own eyes ; which reminds me of a friend of mine, who once dandled that upon his knee which afterward became his wife. I have an ancient manuscript . But I forbear. When I open an old volume, and hear the words of wisdom from the lips of age ; listening, as it were, to " a voice crying from the ground/' methinks it is as the sound of a midnight wind sighing through the branches of an oak a .hoary centenarian ! Ah, reader ! keep to thy books ; especially old books ! They are like the pool of Bethesda, healing and comforting. In the words of quaint Burton, I take leave of thee ; " For if thou dost not ply thy. books, By candle-light to study bent, Employed about some honest thing, Envy, or love, shall thee torment." . I A BABYLONISH DITTY. "1TORE than several years have faded, since my heart was first in vaded, By a brown-skinned, gray-eyed siren, on the merry old " South Side;" Where the mill-flume cataracts glisten, and the agile blue-fish listen To the fleet of phantom schooners floating on the weedy tide. 134 A BABYLONISH DITTY. Tis the land of rum and romance, for the old South Bay is no man's, But belongs (as all such places should belong) to Uncle Sam ; There you'll see the amorous plover, and the woodcock in the cover, And the silky trout all over, underneath the water-dam. There amid the sandy reaches, in among the pines and beeches, Oaks, and various other kinds of old primeval forest trees, Did we wander in the noonlight, or beneath the silver moonlight, While in ledges sighed the sedges to the salt salubrious breeze. Oh ! I loved her as a sister often, often times I kissed her, Holding prest against my vest her slender, soft, seductive hand ; Often by my midnight taper, filled at least a quire of paper With some graphic ode, or sapphic, " To the nymph of Babyland.' T Oft we saw the dim blue highlands, Coney, Oak, and other islands, (Moles that dot the dimpled bosom of the sunny summer sea,) Or 'mid polished leaves of lotus, whereso 'er our skiff would float us, Anywhere, where none could notice, there we sought alone to be. Thus till summer was senescent, and the woods were iridescent, Dolphin tints, and hectic-hints of what was shortly coming on, Did I worship Amy Milton, fragile was the faith I built on, Then we parted ; broken-hearted, I, when she left Babylon. As upon the moveless water lies the motionless frigata, Flings her spars and spidery outlines lightly on the lucid plain, Bat whene'er the fresh breeze bloweth, to more distant oceans goeth, Never more the old haunt knoweth, never more returns again A BABYLONISH DITTY. 135 So is woman evanescent ; shifting with the shifting present ; Changing like the changing tide, and faithless as the fickle sea ; Lighter than the wind-blown thistle ; falser than the fowler's whistle Was that coaxing piece of hoaxing Amy Milton's love to me : Yes, thou transitory bubble ! floating on this sea of trouble, Though the sky be bright above thee, soon will sunny days be gone ; Then when thou'rt by all forsaken, will thy bankrupt heart awaken To those golden days of olden times in happy Babylon ! THE FIEST O YSTEE-EATEK. rilHE impenetrable veil of antiquity hangs over the ante diluvian oyster, but the geological finger-post points to the testifying fossil. We might, in pursuing this sub ject, sail upon the broad pinions of conjecture into the re mote, or flutter with lighter wings in the regions of fable, but it is unnecessary : the mysterious pages of Nature are ever opening freshly around us, and in her stony volumes, amid the calcareous strata, we behold the precious mollusc the primeval bivalve, - " rock-ribbed ! and ancient as the sun." BRYANT. Yet, of its early history we know nothing. Etymolo gy throws but little light upon the matter. In vain have we carried our researches into the vernacular of the maritime 138 THE FIRST OYSTER-EATER. Phoenicians, or sought it amid the fragments of Chaldean and Assyrian lore. To no purpose have we analyzed the roots of the comprehensive Hebrew, or lost ourselves in the baffling labyrinths of the oriental Sanscrit. The history of the ancient oyster is written in no language, except in the universal idiom of the secondary strata ! Nor is this sur prising in a philosophical point of view. Setting aside the pre-Adamites, and taking Adam as the first name-giver, when we reflect, that Adam lived iN-land, and therefore never saw the succulent periphery in its native mud, we may deduce this reasonable conclusion : viz., that as he never saw it, he probably never NAMED it never ! not even to his most intimate friends. Such being the case, we must seek for information in a later and more enlighten ed age. And here let me take occasion to remark, that oysters and intelligence are nearer allied than many persons imagine. The relations between Physiology and Psychol ogy are beginning to be better understood. A man might be scintillant with facetiousness over a plump " Shrewsbury," who would make a very sorry figure over a bowl of water- gruel. The gentle, indolent Brahmin, the illiterate Lap- lander, the ferocious Libyan, the mercurial Frenchman, and the stolid (I beg your pardon), the stalwart Englishman, are not more various in their mental capacities than in THE FIRST OYSTER-EATER. 139 their table aesthetics. And even in this Century, we see that wit and oysters come in together with September, and wit and oysters go out together in May a circumstance not without its weight, and peculiarly pertinent to the sub ject-matter. With this brief but not irrelevant digression, I will proceed. We have " Ostreum " from the Latins, " Oester " from the Saxons, " Auster " from the Teutons, " Ostra " from the Spaniards, and " Huitre" from the French words evidently of common origin threads spun from the same distaff ! And here our archaeology narrows to a point, and this point is the pearl we are in search of: viz., the genesis of this most excellent fish. "Words evidently derived from a common origin/' What origin ? Let us examine the venerable page of his tory. Where is the first mention made of oysters ? Hu- dibras says : " the Emperor Caligula, Who triumphed o'er the British seas, Took crabs and " OYSTEES" prisoners (mark that !) And lobsters, 'stead of cuirassiers ; Engaged his legions in fierce bustles With periwinkles, prawns, and muscles, And led his troops with furious gallops, To charge whole regiments of scallops ; Not, like their ancient way of war, To wait on his triumphal car, 140 THE FIRST OYSTER-EATER. But when he went to dine or sup, More bravely ate his captives up ; Leaving all war by his example, Reduced to vict'ling of a camp well." This is the first mention in the classics of oysters ; and we now approach the cynosure of our inquiry. From this we infer that oysters came originally from Britain. The word is unquestionably primitive. The broad open vowel- ly sound is, beyond a doubt, the primal, spontaneous thought that found utterance when the soft, seductive mollusc first exposed its white bosom in its pearly shell to the enraptured gaze of aboriginal man ! Is there a ques tion about it ? Does not every one know, when he sees an oyster, that that is its name ? And hence we reason that it originated in Britain, was latinized by the Eomans, re- plevined by the Saxons, corrupted by the Teutons, and finally barbecued by the French. Oh, philological ladder by which we mount upward, until we emerge beneath the clear vertical light of Truth ! ! Methinks I see the FIRST OYSTER-EATER 1 A brawny, naked savage, with his wild hair matted over his wild eyes, a zodiac of fiery stars tattoo ed across Ins muscular breast unclad, unsandalled, hirsute and hungry he breaks through the underwoods that mar gin the beach, and stands alone upon the sea-shore, with THE FIRST OYSTER-EATER. 141 nothing in one hand but his unsuccessful boar-spear ; and nothing in the other but his fist. There he beholds a splendid panorama ! The west all a-glow ; the conscious waves blushing as the warm sun sinks to their embraces ; the blue sea on his left ; the interminable forest on his right ; and the creamy sea-sand curving in delicate tracery between. A Picture and a Child of Nature ! Delighted ly he plunges in the. foam, and swims to the bald crown of a rock that uplifts itself above the waves. Seating himself he gazes upon the calm expanse beyond, and swings his legs against the moss that spins its filmy tendrils in the brine. Suddenly he utters a cry ; springs up ; the blood streams from his foot. With barbarous, fury he tears up masses of sea moss, and with it clustering families of tes- tacea. Dashing them down upon the rock, he perceives a liquor exuding from the fragments ; he sees the white pul py delicate morsel half-hidden in the cracked shell, and in stinctively reaching upward, his hand finds mouth, and amidst a savage, triumphant deglutition, he murmurs OYSTER ! ! Champing, in his uncouth fashion, bits of shell and- sea- weed, with uncontrollable pleasure he masters this mystery of a new sensation, and not until the gray veil of night is drawn over the distant waters, does he leave the rock, covered with the trophies of his victoiy. 142 THE FIRST OYSTER-EATER. We date from this epoch the maritime history of Eng land. Ere long, the reedy cabins of her aborigines cluster ed upon the banks of beautiful inlets, and overspread her long lines of level beaches ; or pencilled with delicate wreaths of smoke the savage aspect of her rocky coasts. The sword was beaten into the oyster-knife, and the spear into oyster rakes. Commerce spread her white wings along the shores of happy Albion, and man emerged at once into civilization from a nomadic state. From this people arose the mighty nation of Ostrogoths ; from the Ostraphagi of ancient Britain came the custom of Ostracism that is, sending political delinquents to that place where they can get no more oysters. There is a strange fatality attending all discoverers. Our Briton saw a mighty change come over his country a change beyond the reach of memoiy or speculation. Neighboring tribes, formerly hostile, were now linked together in bonds of amity. A sylvan, warlike people had become a peace ful, piscivorous community ; and he himself, once the low est of his race, was now elevated above the dreams of his am bition. He stood alone upon the sea-shore, looking to\wd the rock, which, years ago, had been his stepping-stone to power, and a desire to revisit it came over him. He stands now upon it. The season, the hour, the westerly sky, re- THE FIRST OYSTER-EATER. 143 mind him of former times. He sits and meditates. Sud denly a flush of pleasure overspreads his countenance ; for there just below the flood, he sees a gigantic bivalve alone with mouth agape, as if yawning with very weari ness at the solitude in which it found itself. What I am about to describe may be untrue. But I believe it. I have heard of the waggish propensities of oysters. I have known them, from mere humor, to clap suddenly upon a rat's tail at night ; and, what with the squeaking and the clat ter, we verily thought the devil had broke loose in the cellar. Moreover, I am told upon another occasion, when a demijohn of brandy had burst, a large " Blue-pointer " was found, lying in a little pool of liquor, just drunk enough to be careless of consequences opening and shutting his shells with a " devil-may-care " air, as if he didn't value anybody a brass farthing, but was going to be as noisy as he possibly could. But to return. When our Briton saw the oyster in this defenceless attitude, he knelt down, and gradually reaching his arm toward it, he suddenly thrust his fingers in the aperture, and the oyster closed upon them with a spas modic snap ! In vain the Briton tugged and roared ; he might as well have tried to uproot the solid rock as to move that oyster ! In vain he called upon all his heathen 144 THE FIRST OYSTER-EATER. gods Grog and Magog elder than Woden and Thor ; and with huge, uncouth, druidical d ns consigned all shell-fish to Nidhogg, Hela, and the submarines. Bivalve held on with "a will." It was nuts for him certainly. Here was a great, lubberly, chuckle-headed fellow, the de stroyer of his tribe, with his fingers in chancery, and the tide rising ! A fellow who had thought, like ancient Pis tol, to make the world his oyster, and here was the oyster making a world of him. Strange mutation ! The poor Briton raised his eyes : there were the huts of his people ; he could even distinguish his own, with its slender spiral of smoke ; they were probably preparing a roast for him ; how he detested a roast ! Then a thought of his wife, his little ones awaiting him, tugged at his heart. The waters rose around him. He struggled, screamed in his anguish ; but the remorseless winds dispersed the sounds, and ere the evening moon arose and flung her white radiance upon the placid waves, the last billow had rolled over the FIRST OYS TER-EATER ! I purpose at some future time to show the relation ex isting between wit and oysters. It is true that Chaucer (a poet of considerable promise in the fourteenth century) has alluded to the oyster in rather a disrespectful manner ; and the learned Du Bartas (following the elder Pliny) hath ac- THE FIRST OYSTER-EATER. 145 cused this modest bivalve of " being incontinent/' a charge wholly without foundation, for there is not a more chaste and innocent fish in the world. But the rest of our poets have redeemed it from these foul aspersions in numberless passages, among which we find Shakspeare's happy allu sion to u Rich honesty dwelling in a POOR house." And no one now, I presume, will pretend to deny, that it hath been always held " Great in mouths of wisest censure ! " In addition to a chapter on wit and oysters, I also may make a short digression touching cockles. AN EVENING EEVEEY I BEAD in some old book of mystic lore : One of those y em-books, all illumined o'er With vermeil flowers and azure buds, embraced In latticed gold around the margin laced ; 148 AN EVENING REVERT. Stuffed with strong words, and quaint conceits I fear Not over tuneful they to gentle lady's ear : To some, not all ; for seated at thy feet, Methinks I might that same harsh text repeat, And even win thy smile ; which like the sun, Sheds life and light o'er all it looks upon ; But to begin again "the book," ah me ! I cannot think of it ; my thoughts are all of thee ! Have patience ; well then, thus : it was my hap To read a story of a wondrous cap, " Old Fortunatus", and the tale doth say That when he would at once be far away From where he was, 'twas but to don the hood, And wish and straight it chanced he was where'er he would. Thus far I read, and folding down the place, I sighed and wished mine were Fortunio's case, Or that some fairy would bestow the prize, So I might spurn the earth and cleave the skies, Uplifted high as the dizzy heavens be, Then downward speed to earth, and heaven again, and thee ! So sitting in the lamp-light's pensive gloom, Methought sweet perfumes floated in the room, Link after link of revery's golden chain Stretched o'er the waste that lay between us twain ; AN EVENING REVERY. 149 Tumultuous raptures every fibre thrilled With love intense. And lo ! I found the wish fulfilled ! I was with thee ! thy presence filled the place, And I was standing gazing on thy face ; Near thee, yet sad, my spirit seemed to wait, Like the lorn Peri at the golden gate ; But with averted look you turned to part, And then methought the pulse had stopped within my heart. I saw thee lift the dew-drooped roses up, I saw thee raise the lily's pearled cup, I marked the loving tendrils round thee cling, And high above the wild-bird's welcoming ; The very sky thy presence bent to greet, The very sunshine seemed as if 'twould, kiss thy feet. Then with a sigh I spake : "And has thy heart For me not left one little nook apart, One shaded, secret spot, where I may come And comfort find and peace ; and call it home ? Hast thou, in pity, none ? or must my fate Still be to wander on, unloved and desolate ? " Unanswered, back my fainting spirit flew ; O'er the broad page the flowery fretwork grew : 150 AN EVENING REVERY. The lamp waxed bright, the crabbed text appeared, And old Fortuuio, with his silver beard, Gleamed in the marge amid th' emblazoned flowers, While from mine eyes fell tears like parting April showers. ON THE HABITS OF IRISHMEN. " In what part of her body stands Ireland ? v SHAKSPEAKE. rPHE Green island of Erin, which should more properly be called the Ked island of Ire, is situated off the northwest coast of England. It is about two hundred and seventy-eight miles in length, by one hundred and fifty-five in breadth, differing therein from the brogue of the country, which is as broad as it is long. It is inhab ited by a race known familiarly as Irishmen. Its principal exports are linens, whiskey, and emigrants, the two latter usually going together, the former by itself. It is also famous for its breed of bulls, specimens of which, pontifi cal and otherwise, may be found in any history of Erin : Ireland is also celebrated for its wit and poverty : two 152 ON THE HABITS OF IRISHMEN. words which have become synonyms in almost every lan guage. Its cleanliness is proverbial, the very pigs being as clean, if not cleaner, than their owners ; while in regard to honesty, we are assured by Swift " that the children seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing until they arrive at six years old ; " although he confesses they get the rudiments much earlier. The cultivation of vegetables is an object of national interest in Ireland, especially the shamrock and shillelah ; the latter, in fact, may be seen flourishing all over the island. As to vermin, if there be any truth in history, St. Patrick gave them their quietus in the year 526 ; then, or thenabout : I am not critical as to the exact date, but a traditional something to that effect has been running in every Irishman's head since the epoch of the Saint's visit in that century. Ireland is also famous for sobriety, although the Maine Law has not yet been introduced : "for how," says Pat, " can we have a ' Maine Law ' upon an island ? Besides, we could only carry it out at the point of the bayonet, which would be the biggest bull poor Paddy ever yet made in the way of philanthropy ! " But there is another reason. It is embodied in a legend of St. Patrick, and a legend with an Irishman is as good as an axiom with a mathematician. It is this : ON THE HABITS OF IRISHMEN. " You have heard, I suppose, long ago, How the snakes in a manner most antic He thrapsed afther the pipes to Mayo, And then drown'd them all in the Atlantic ! Hence, not to use wather for drink The good people of Ireland detarmine, And with mighty good reason, I think, Since St. PIIADEICK has filled it with varmin, And vipers, and other such stuff ! " Perhaps no people in the world possess more of the "amor patrice" than the inhabitants of this interesting country. Thousands come to our shores every week who would live or die for ould Ireland, but who would neither live nor die in ould Ireland : it being a notion with Pat that the best way to enjoy himself at home is by going abroad. This patriotic and philosophical sentiment has been sometimes emulated in the land of the free and the home of the brave. In foreign climes two arts, two sciences, engage the attention of the Hibernian : Horticulture and Architec ture. Passing along the streets, the spectator is struck with facades of beautiful buildings in process of erection, adorned with picturesque Paddies in alto relievo, or beholds them swarming on domes like bees, excavating like moles, bridging and damming like beavers, and like 154 ON THE HABITS OF IRISHMEN. a The bird of summer The temple-haunting martlet," approving " each jutty, frieze, buttress, and coign of van tage, by his loved mansionry." " Where they most breed and haunt (says Shakspeare) I have observed the air is delicate ! " Horticulture is a passion with Paddy. It is himself that makes his way through the world with Pomona in his arms. Strip him of his hoe, cast his hod to the winds, let every rung of his ambitious ladder be scattered to the cor ners of the earth, and Pat has still a resource. See him laden with golden oranges, with fragrant bananas, with cocoa-nuts that resemble his own head when clipped with the sheep-shears, with embossed and spiky pines ! Not indigenous, but tropical fruits ; exotics, like himself. And did any living being ever see him eat a fruit ? Never ! To him they are sacred. As well might you persuade the circumcised Levite to eat the shew-bread. Pat believes in the usefulness of meat, but was there ever seen an Irish butcher ? His tender disposition pre vents him trafficking in his household gods. He is more than a Brahmin in that respect. If you live in the coun try and lose your cow, or a favorite ram stray from the fold, look for it among your Irish neighbors. In those ON THE HABITS OF IRISHMEN. 155 rude cottages, displaying on their outer walls the ragged ensigns of poverty, is hidden the jewel of charity. From pure compassion your lo, or Aries, has probably been shel tered in the most comfortable and secluded part of some Irishman's barn. Irish mechanics are not common. To be sure there are tailors and shoemakers who speak the language of Brian Borheime, but they puzzle not their heads with more ab struse and scientific mechanical pursuits. Many as we find perishing annually by steamboat and railroad disasters, no Hibernian has ever bethought himself of any thing to pre vent the explosion of boilers. If he did, in all probability he would get it on the wrong end, and make matters worse instead of better. Whether it arise from his haughty Spanish or Scythian blood, I know not, but Pat has never made one useful invention since the beginning of the world : and in calamities like the above, as he has done nothing for his fellows, his loss is not considered as a pub lic disaster : they give a list of the rest of the sufferers, and the Paddies are usually thrown in. I am inclined to believe Pat will find "Stame" a more powerful antagonist than his present ally, and enemy, England. To be sure he is often found on the track of improvements, but the ratio of his velocity is not in pro- 156 ON THE HABITS OF IRISHMEN. portion to the square of the distance. The consequence is an affair with the cow-catcher, in which he usually conies off second best. This however might be easily obviated 1 y keeping outside the rails ; but his ruthless enemy, like tlu- grini Afrite in the eastern tale, ever assumes new shapes, the most formidable of which is the most recent. Staim enters the arena, with a mighty pair of arms and a might y shovel, in the shape of an excavator ! How can a real Paddy compete with a .^eow-paddy ? One convulsive throb of the iron muscles, and a ton of earth drops from the enormous spade ! I have touched on, or rather hinted at, two virtues peculiar to Patrick honesty and sobriety : but there is yet an unnamed virtue belonging to him, which everybody will recognize. It is his modesty. An Irish blush is the most cunning sleight of Nature's hand. LA BELLA ENTRISTECID A. RENDERED FROM THE SPANISH OF J. Q. SUZARTE. PRETTY Nina, why this sorrow In thy life's auspicious morning ? Must thy cheek its paleness borrow From the ashen hues of sorrow, When thy youth's bright day is dawning ? Why with hidden ill repineth That pure virgin heart of thine ? Heart where grace and love combineth, Free from stain, as star that shineth Through the azure crystalline. Why should eyes like thine be shrouded In their tearful radiate fringes ? Eyes, whose brightness when unclouded 158 LA BELLA ENTRISTECIDA. Shineth like the moon unshrouded, When her beams the lakelet tinges. Thou, in thy sweet pensive dolor, Still more beauteous seem'st to me : Ah, I see the truant color Chase the gloomy shades of dolor From my bright divinity ! Tranquil in thy peace thou sleepest, While those waxen-lidded eyes Closed upon the world thou keepest, And thy soul in rapture steepest With the angel melodies. In thy tender heart are blended Sinless grief, and resignation Calm and placid : though unfriended, Soon thy suffering will be ended, Soon restored thy animation. In thy cheek the lucid blushes Will return to embellish all ; Soon thy lily forehead flushes Underneath the rosy blushes Of the virgin coronal. LA BELLA ENTRISTECIDA. 159 What from grief brings ever pleasure ? What content, from woe and pain ? What turns losses into treasure, Bringing blisses without measure To the sorrowed heart again ? i Hope ! ' my 'Nina ( Hope/ beloved ! Beautiful, beneficent, Lo ! your griefs are soon removed, Lo ! your faith and virtue proved, And the bitter woe is spent. ON THE HABITS OF SCOTCHMEN 'Where Scotland?" 'I found it by the barrenness, hard in the palm of the hand." SHAKSPEARE. " Quid immerentes hospites vexas canis ? " HORACE. Q GOTLAND, or North Britain, is a vast country, not ? quite so large as Ireland. In length, the kingdoms are about equal, but Scotland is less broad, being exceeding narrow in some parts. In this respect, a Scotchman is a fair epitome of his country. His shibboleth, however, is sufficiently comprehensive for mercantile purposes. The reason why Scotchmen admire their own language, is because they are Scotchmen. " I do not know," says a friend, " a more remarkable instance of self-complacency than that of a Scotchman priding himself upon mispro nouncing the English tongue/' This opinion is invidious and incorrect, as will be seen by reasons which follow : It must strike everyone acquainted with this sagacious 162 ON THE HABITS OF SCOTCHMEN. people, that the chief national characteristic is absence of all pretence. Hence arose their zeal in the cause of the Pretender. For it is a common proof that men are apt to admire in others those qualities which they possess not themselves. How else account for those Jacobin spasm s, those musical manifestations from flatulent bag-pipes, which welcomed " Koyal Charlie/' the Papist, among the blue-nosed Presbyters of the land of Knox ? Had they not been sufficiently roasted, toasted, grilled, seared, branded, and devilled by the Stuart, sixty years before ? Was there no elder remaining whose memory could reach as far as the days and deeds of Claverhouse ? None whose taste for music had been seriously impaired by the demands levied upon their auricular organs by that fasci nating cavalier ? It is impossible to solve the problem, except by the above reason. I admire this warlike nation. None love so much to breathe the sulphurous clouds of war as the Scotchman. The smell of brimstone reminds him of home. He comes from his glorious mountains, and goes into the fight bare- breeched. Simple in his diet, he finds content in a man ger ; and his admiration of the thistle is only emulated by that patient animal so touchingly spoken of in the Senti mental Journey. " Nemo me impune lacessit : touch me ON THE HABITS OF SCOTCHMEN. 163 not with impunity : if thou dost, thou shalt scratch for it," is his motto. Wrapped in his plaid and his pedigree ; revelling in kilts and kail brose ; alike ready with his claymore and usquebaugh ; with much in his skull and more in his mull ; in Highland or Lowland ; whether on the barren heath or no less barren mountain, who can help loving Sawney, the child of poetry and poverty ? Cole ridge loved him, Charles Lamb loved him, Dr. Johnson loved him, Junius loved him, Sydney Smith loved him, and I love Sawney, and my love is disinterested. Bless his diaphanous soul ! who can help it ? Scotchmen differ from their Celtic neighbors in some respects. Pat is a prodigal ; his idea of a friend is "something to be assisted;" a. joke is the key to- his heart. Sawney, on the contrary, is ver.a prudent ; a friend means "something from which to expect assist ance ; " and a joke with him is a problem beyond the (Edipus. An Irishman's idea of a head is something to hit ; a Scotchman's is something to be scratched. I do not know of such a thing extant as an Irish, or Scotch Jew. Thriftless Paddy with thrifty Mordecai would make a compound bitter as salt ; but a Scotch Jew, I fancy, would be a hard hand to drive a bargain with. Who has not heard of Scottish hospitality ? Did you, 164 ON THE HABITS OF SCOTCHMEN. reader, ever have a Highland welcome ? If not, I will tell you what it is. It is a tune upon the national violin ; the only thing a stranger gets and carries away from the land o' cakes. There is a great difference between the Highland and the Lowland Scot. This, however, is not so- evident when they migrate, and get their local peculiarities worn away by attrition with civilized life. Yet there is, and always has been, a difference between them. We, who live amid a population more checkered than the most elaborate speci men of tartan plaid, care very little whether a man's name begin with a "Mac" or not, that being interesting only to the directory publisher, and not bearing at all upon social or fashionable life. But the question assumes a different aspect when Mr. Ferguson recognizes in Mr. McFingal a descendant of some former McFingal, who, in a moment of playful levity, came down from Ben this, or Ben that, with his 'kilted Kernes and Gallowglasses, in the manner so beautifully described by young Norval, and at one fell swoop 'carried off all his (Mr. Ferguson's) ancestral Fergu son's owsen and kye, his Eryholmes and Ayrshires, his lambies and hoggies, yowes, and whatsoever else of farrn- stock and implements lay handy and convenient, without so much as leaving his note of hand for the same. ON THE HABITS OF SCOTCHMEN. 165 Nor does Mr. McFingal feel a throb of joy at meeting a descendant of that Ferguson who, with a sma' band in hodden gray, burked his ancestral McFingal, when in all the glory of clan-plaid and sporran, the old gentleman was looking very like a male Bloomer without pantalettes, and reminded him of previous little familiarities by hanging him to the nearest tree (if he found one large enough), for fear he might never get another chance. These trifling family bickerings, however, rarely disturb the outward manifestations of courtesy : Mr. F. meets Mr. McF. with the utmost apparent cordiality ; although, I fear, each have a secret impulse which had better be left hidden in the Scotch mists of dubiety. One faculty peculiar to Scotland is the gift of second- sight. A remarkable dilation of the pupil when a Scotch man sees a shilling makes it appear in his eyes as large as two shillings. This is second-sight. To it may be ascribed his wonderful abstemiousness. A red herring in his ecstatic vision becomes glorified it rises to the majesty of a silver salmon ; a spare-rib expands to a sirloin, and a bannock o' barley meal enlarges to the dimensions of a bride's-cake. "You never see," says Mr. Strahan to Dr.. Johnson, "you never see people dying of hunger in Scotland, as you often do in England." " That," replied the Doctor, " is owing to 166 ON TIIK HABITS OF SCOTCHMEN. the impossibility of starving a Scotchman." This anecdote, which I give upon the authority of James Boswell, Esq., Laird of Auchinleek, will be readily understood, if we ac cept the above postulate. That second-sight is a source of great gratification to Scotchmen is unquestionably true, but there is one ex ception. Very few of that "volant tribe of bards," I take it, covet much a second sight of their own country. In support of this opinion, let me mention a circumstance which occurred some years ago in England. A Scotchman, for some offence, was sentenced, in one of the criminal courts, to be hanged ; but his countrymen, in a petition as long as his pedigree, besought the King to commute the sentence, to which His Majesty graciously acceded, order ing him to be transported instead. When Sawney heard of this little diversion in his favor, in place of expressing any signs of joy, he turned, with misery written in every lineament of his face, and as^ed where the King intended to send him. " To Botany Bay," was the answer. " Gude bless his saul," said Sawney, brightening up at once ; " I was afeard I was to be sent hame again ! " IJk>ok forward to acquiring a taste for Scottish poetry as one of the pleasing accomplishments of my old age. What I mean, is that written in the melodious dialect of ON THE HABITS OF SCOTCHMEN. 167 the land of Hogg. Scottish prose, I regret to say, has scarcely an existence, owing to the fact that every scholar in North Britain endeavors to learn English as speedily as possible, in order to fulfil his destiny ; for to write a History of England seems to be the height of Scotch literary ambition. It is a singular fact, but for the disinterested labors of their brethren in the North, Englishmen would scarcely know any thing of their own country. Pride of birth is another happy attribute of Sawney. No matter how unkindly the north wind may whistle through his tattered breeks ; no matter if he have not a bawbee in his loof, nor parritch in his pot, he looks back through the haze of antiquity, and beholds his illustrious Forbears like a string of onions reversed, with the biggest ones on top, and the little ones following at a respectful distance. There is something so naive in Tennant's life of Allan Ramsay, that I cannot help bringing it in here, by way of an episode : "His step-father, little consulting the inclination of young Allan, and wishing as soon as possible, and at any rate, to disencumber himself of the charge of his support, bound this nursling of the muse apprentice to a wig-maker. 168 ON THE HABITS OF SCOTCHMEN*. Lowly as this profession is, it has been vindicated by one of Kamsay's biographers into comparative dignity, by sep arating it from the kindred business of barber, with which it is vulgarly and too frequently confounded. Ramsay was never, it seems, a barber ; his enemies never blotted him with that ignominy ; his calling of i skull- thacker/ as he himself ludicrously terms it, was too dignified to be let down into an equality with the men of the razor. Thus, from the beginning, his business was with the heads of men ! " If this be not getting cleverly out of a bad business, I do not understand Scotch. Having vindicated the young a sknll-thatcher" from the sharp practice of men of the razor, it will not be out of place to lift him a notch higher by another quotation from the same book : " His mother, Alice Bower, was daughter of Allan Bower, a gentleman of Derbyshire, whom Lord Hopetown had brought to Scotland to superintend his miners. In his lineage, therefore, our poet had something to boast of, and though born to nae lairdship" (he means 'not worth a rap/) "he fails not to congratulate himself on being sprung from the fain-s of a Douglas." In the Tropics there are certain porous vessels, through which fluids, no matter how impure, distil in bright drops, ON THE HABITS OF SCOTCHMEN. 169 without showing any taint of the offensive contact. In like manner, it is easy to imagine the blood of a Douglas percolating through the clay of a wig-maker, and de scending to a late posterity in all its original splendor. Methinks I see it centuries hence, running its devious course through paupers and scavengers ; through poets and pickpockets ; rusting in jails, and stagnating in alms- houses, but finally blazing out in pristine lustre flashing on panels glittering on harness blazing in plaids : the same old feudal blood of the Ked Douglas, which throbbed in the heart of Allan Kamsay, the skull-thatcher, and author of one of the sweetest lyrical dramas in the language ! With this grand flourish of bagpipes, I drop the cur tain. In the words of my old friend, " May ye be as wise as a serpent, and as cannie as a dove." THE LOCKET: AN ANCIENT BALLAD. AND thrice her lily-hand he wrung, And kissed her lip so sweet ; Then, by the mane and stirrup, swung Himself into his seat. And as he galloped through the town, He said, " Though we must part, May Heaven prove false to me, if I Prove false to thee, sweetheart/'' 1*72 THE LOCKET : AN ANCIENT BALLAD. Then by a silken string lie drew A locket quaint and old ; The ore and braid, with leaves inlaid, Shone like a marigold. He sighed amain ; then touched the spring ; Aside he brushed a tear ; Smiled out ; quoth he, " This pledge may brinj A cradle or a bier." Beneath a leaden, murderous sky, The roaring cannons glow ; With thunderous wound they scar the ground, While loud the trumpets blow : The air is filled with bloody foam, The sward is torn and wet By ball, and shot, and corpse, and clot, And deadly bayonet. But where yon band the foeman dares, The noblest, bravest, best, Is he who in the battle bears A locket on his breast. He cheers them on ! A bullet speeds ! " What means that sudden start ? " The mark ! (the locket and the braid,) Is driven in his heart. THE LOCKET : AN ANCIENT BALLAD. They buried him, at vesper bell, The red kirk-wall beside ; The mossed kirk tolled another knell, When there they bore his bride : ,/.<*&;. ;:.?... 5 173 And thrice an hundred years have flown ; Yet what care they or we ? " So here's to him, the gallant knight, And to his fair ladve." ON SOCIETIES AMELIORATING THE CONDITION OF THE RICH. " The quality of mercy is not strained : It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath : it is twice blessed ; It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes." SHAKBPEARE. TT hath long been a matter of surprise to me, that amidst a multitude of benevolent institutions we have none for ameliorating the condition of the rich. A large class is certainly left out of the sphere of popular charity, which, from a careful examination of the smallest camels in vari ous menageries, and a personal inspection of John Hem ming a,nd Son's best drilled-eyed cambrics, seems to stand more in need of bur sympathies than any people under the sun. We may also observe, when one of these highly-re spected citizens is on his way to the other world, he is gen erally followed by an unusual concourse of clergymen ; and 176 SOCIETIES FOR AMELIORATING THE this, like a consultation of physicians, would appear to in dicate that the person was in more than ordinary peril, and therefore needed greater care and skill than one within the reach of customary medicines. I am impelled to make this suggestion more particu larly now, from the fact that this class is growing upon us : the evil is spreading, and to a greater extent than many good people imagine. I have been surprised lately to find persons whom I did not imagine worth a copper, freely ac knowledging themselves to be wealthy ; and others, of whose poverty I had not a doubt, confessing, with some little tribulation and blushing, there was no truth in that report ; that money was with them, yea, abundantly. Such being the case, a common sense of humanity should induce us to relieve our opulent brethren from a portion of their distress, in order to prevent extension of the mischief. " Homo sum ; nihil liumani d me alienum puto." We, who belong to the ancient and honorable order of poverty, must not be neglectful of such claims upon us. Yet we should do it tenderly and affectionately ; not haughtily, and with an air of superiority, but with a grace. " Poverty," saith Austin, " is the way to heaven, the mistress of philosophy, the mother of religion, virtue, so briety, sister of innocency and an upright mind." , True CONDITION OF THE RICH. 177 I dispute not .the words of the Father : but need we there fore exult and vaingloriously contemn those who have the misfortune to be rich ? Should we not rather take them by the hand, and show them the way to be better, wiser, happier ? Should we not teach them that riches are only relative blessings ; poverty a positive one ? Should we let them struggle on for years and years in a wrong path, without endeavoring to .pluck them " as brands from the burning ? " Kiches are only relative : Apax is rich, but Syphax is richer : by-and-by, some rude, illiterate fellow, who went to California with a spade on his shoulder, returns with money enough to eclipse both. Our little domestic flashes of wealth pale their ineffectual fires before the dazzling op ulence of the India House ; nay, show like poverty itself, compared with that treasury of empires, which seems to realize " the royal state which far Outshone the wealth of Ormus or of Ind." And yet Tempus edax rerum : its ingots and tissues, its barbaric pearl and gold, will be scattered ; 'oblivion will set its seal upon it ; obscurity, with dust and ashes Stay The India House has a name connected with it an humble and unpretending name whose influence will 178 SOCIETIES FOR AMELIORATING THE draw pilgrims thither while one crumbling stone rests upon another ; and when the very ground where it now stands shall be forgotten, when its illustrious line of name less nabobs lie neglected with the common multitude, upon that ancient edifice will rest, like a sunset glory, the fame of Charles Lamb. I know many are jealous of position, and derive no lit tle self-respect from what they call their " circumstances." But how mutable is pecuniary fame ! Must not the mere wealthy occupy a position comparatively degraded in the presence of the wealthier ? And how do our wealthiest show beside those nabobs of the India House those east ern magnificats ? Very like paupers, I fancy. Should it not then awaken the sympathies of the benevolent the unfortunate situation of those " creatures of circum stance ? " There are those, rich as well as poor, superior to this, and with such, this humane proposition has nothing to do. Refinement and courtesy adorn opulence ; benevolence moves in a wider sphere, rare accomplishments and ex quisite taste are more attainable, when liberal means unite with liberal uses. But ignorance and vulgarity, mean ness and pretence, are hideous in gilded trappings. For the benefit of this class I make the suggestion. CONDITION -OF THE RICH. 179 It is not in my nature to cast reflections. I could scarcely forgive the spiteful allusion of H the other day to a certain Gothic building, which he called "the ecclesiastical rattle for grown-up children ; " an epithet- unworthy of a poor man glorying in the power of his lite rary affluence. No, far be it from me to countenance uncharitable reflections : let us remember we are all hu man, it is man's nature to err, many cannot help being rich ; and souls' vibrating between the opera-house and such places as the one above alluded to, drifting as it were upon tides of harmony any whither, are objects not of our derision but of our pity. My intention had been to refer to the miseries of the rich in this paper, but a .mere allusion to so fruitful a sub ject will doubtless suggest enough to awaken the sympa thies of the benevolent. Avarice mere avarice, in it self- is bad enough ; a powerful astringent, it produces consti pation of the mind, from whence comes ignorance, the mother of mischief. But Avarus dies and endows bene volent institutions, and thereby the world is bettered. It is the tinsel show of real or affected wealth ; its currents of folly, its ebbs and flows, tides, eddies and whirlpools ; its generations, rising up in young misses who have not left off the rocking motion acquired in the cradle ; its 180 SOCIETIES FOR AMELIORATING squab-dandies, stilting along on legs you might thrust in your double-barrel gun ; its elders, with a reversion in Greenwood for the benefit of their heirs ; it is this show, this pageant, which appears to the philanthropist pitiable beyond the mimic efforts of the stage, the fictions of ima gination, or the supplications of the professional pauper who begs, with God knows how much, content in his heart. I fear I also may be amenable to the charge of " boasting poverty, with too much pride," as Prior hath it, and therefore will turn to the main part and body, or rather head, of my subject. I propose to the benevolent, to establish societies for ameliorating the condition of the rich. I would suggest that a board of directors be appointed, with visiting com mittees, to inquire into the condition of the more opulent families, to call upon them personally, and give such advice and assistance as their several cases seem to require. To the board of visitors, I would refer the motto above quoted : " The quality of mercy is not strained : .It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath : it is TWICE blessed ; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." Therefore take what you can, and be merciful. CONDITION OF THE RICH. 181 I would recommend an asylum to be provided for those whose opulence is excessive, and at the same time whose mental incapacity prevents them taking proper care of themselves. I would suggest the purchase of substantial woollen garments for those who need them ; gymnasiums for youth ; and that a proper care be had for the moral culture of both sexes. But, above all, I suggest the immediate organization of the society. The miseries of the rich afford so copious a field for the exercise of true benevolence, that I leave the matter to those more experienced and better able to advise than the writer. WHERE IS THE HOLY TEMPLE? WHERE is the holy temple where the fane Which sin-sick souls may seek, for heavenly grace, And casting off all earthly care and pain, Find resting-place ? Where, as upon the sacred mount, the dew Grently descends the parched grass reviving ; The blessing falls the sinner feels anew His faith surviving ! Where is the faithful watchman ? Where the tower From whence the cry is heard, " Repent and live ? " Where is the manna, that in latest hour Relief can give ? 184 WHERE IS THE HOLY TEMPLE ? Not in these marble piles of sculptured glory, Where the lulled sense alone is gratified ; Of earthly pomp the vain repository, And human pride. Not where the organ peals, the voices soar, In sounds voluptuous from harmonic choirs ; Not where the saint-emblazoned windows pour Irradiate fires. Here shall the lowly hope ; the haughty quail ; The guilty melt with soul-subduing fears ? The secret, drooping heart at length unveil Its urn of tears ? Alas ! not here abides the dispensation ; Seek then thy closet ; weeping, kiss the rod ; Pour out thy grief with earnest supplication And trust in God ! ALLITERATION. u T1THY the art of poetry should be so much neglected, ' and the inferior art of music so extensively cultiva ted in this age of intelligence ? " is a question more easily asked than answered. There are many young ladies, and young gentlemen, able to discourse, almost pedantically, of chromatics and dynamics; of staccatos and appoggiaturas ; who would not be ashamed to confess they had not the re motest idea of an iambus, or a dactyl. I speak now of the elementary principles of those arts ; of acquaintance with the mechanism, by which certain effects are produced in either. I do not think a mere knowledge of the cate chism of verses sufficient to create a Byron or a Shak- speare. I am sure cultivation in music has produced very few Mozarts or Rossinis, this side the Atlantic. But 186 ALLITERATION. if we aspire neither to be great poets, nor great composers, why devote so much attention to acquire the art of the lat ter, and neglect entirely the art of the first ? Why not understand the iambic measure as well as common time ? Why not a trochee as well as a crotchet ? Why not language in its divinest form as well as sound ? Why not cultivate conversation as well as music ? The essays of Edgar A. Poe, and "Imagination and Fancy," by Leigh Hunt, are not only valuable, but agree able text-books, relating to an art, a knowledge of which should be one of the indispensable requisites of polite edu cation. As for the cast-aside prosodies of the school-room, they had better be left where they are. They hold freedom of expression in bondage and load invention with shackles. They are retrospective, not introspective. They teach us what has been done, not what may be done. Imagination and fancy, pathos and humor, are born, not made.* But these rare gifts take various forms of expres sion. The poet sees a moonlight and describes it. The painter paints it. Harmony is translated differently by * I believe wit must be cultivated. It is not a natural faculty, like the others. A child is never witty but by accident. ALLITERATION. 187 sculpture and music. But the same feeling for, or sense of beauty, pervades either and all. Imagination takes a poetic form through versification. Ben Jonson, in his " Discoveries," observes this. " A po em, as I have told you, is the work of the poet ; the end and fruit of his labor and study. Poesy is his skill or craft of making ; the very fiction itself, the reason or form of the work. And these three voices differ as the thing done, the doing, and the doer ; the thing feigned, the feigning and the feigner ; so the poem, the poesy (or ver sification), and the poet." Versification is made up of many elements. In this art as in others, certain latent principles exist, even in the rudest productions. These have been more or less develop ed by various poets in various ages. To one of these ele ments, which is in truth only a minor embellishment, I pur pose to devote this essay. That alliteration, as an element of the. art, has been carefully studied by almost all English poets, must be ob vious to every reader of English poetry. The illustrations I shall present, by way of simplifying the matter will be confined to a single letter of the alphabet. The liquid con sonant " L " will suit the purpose best, because it is a favor ite, and justly so, on account of its euphony. 188 ALLITERATION. " The letter L" says Ben Jonson, " hath a half-vowel- ish sound/ 7 and " melteth in the sounding." Many of the softest words in our language hold it (so to speak) in solu tion. Amiable, voluble, golden, silvery, gentle, peaceful, tranquil, glide, glode, dimple, temple, simple, dulcet, blithely, vernal, tendril, melody, lute, twinkle, lonely, stilly, valley, slowly, lithe, playful, linger, illusion, lovely, nightingale, philomel, graceful, slumber, warble, pool, pen sile, silken, gleam, lull, are all more or less expressive of softness, sweetness, and repose. To this may be objected, that the word " hell ! " with its double consonants, is sug gestive of neither. This is not because the word itself is at fault ; the meaning becomes confounded with the sound. A friend suggests " that if hell were the name of a flower, it would be thought beautiful." "Helen" is a pretty female name, and it is united with the story of her who won the golden apple on Mount Ida the loveliest woman of the world. Are not drowsily, dreamily, lullaby, super-euphonisms ? "How sweet the moonfigkt sleeps upon this bank! " What can replace those two delicious words of that match less line of Shakspeare ? " moonlight sZeeps ! " ALLITERATION. 18'.) " That kiss went tingling to my very heart. When it was gone, the sense of it did stay ; The sweetness cZing'd upon my lips all day." " Cling'd upon my lips ! " exquisite Dryden ! Do we not apprehend, in these lines of Tennyson, a sense of beauty quite as dependent upon the melody as upon the image ? " Many a night I saw the PZeiads, rising thro' the meZZow shade, GZitter Zike a swarm of fire-fZies tangZed in a siZver braid." Our own great poet, Drake, alliterates in the musicallest verses ; "And in AZugaVvaZe beZow The giZded grain is moving sZow, Zike yeZZow moonlight on the sea, When waves are sweZZmg peacefuZZy." Coleridge's famous stanza begins " A damseZ with a duZcimer." Poe ? too, in The Sleeper " At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon ; An opiate vapor, dewy, dim, ExhaZes from out her goZden rim, "J 90 ALLITERATION. " And softZy dripping, drop by drop, Upon the quiet mountain's top, Steals drowsiZy and musicaZZy Into the universaZ vaZZey." Coleridge again " Her gentZe Zimbs she did undress And lay down in her ZoveZiness." Of which Leigh Hunt remarks, " the very smoothness and gentleness of the limbs, is in the series of the letter I's." " A Zady so richly cZad as she, BeautifuZ exceedingZy." Let us take a few examples from Milton : ' Zap me in soft Zydian airs." " In notes with many a winding bout Of Zinked sweetness Zon ^awn out." In Gray's Elegy we find " Now fades the gZimmering Zandscape on the sight, And aZZ the air a soZemn stiZZuess hoZds, Save where the beetZe wheeZs his droning fZight, And drowsy tinkZings ZuZZ the distant foZds." A marvellous collocation of I's. ALLITERATION. 191 It lingers throughout the pages of Shelley " Zike a high-born maiden In a paZace tower, Soothing her Zove-Zaden SouZ in secret hour, With music sweet as Jove, that overflows her bower." " Zike a gZow-worm goZden In a deZZ of dew, Scattering unbehoZden Its aeriaZ hue Among the fZowers and grass, which screen it from the view." There are many instances in Spenser ; I will quote one as an ensample : " The gentZe warbZing wind low answered to aZZ." And Marlowe ' Mine argosie. om Alexandria, Zoaden with spice and siZks, now under sai, Are smoothZy gliding." Kaleigh 1 By shaZZow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigafe." We observe Shakspeare quotes this. 192 ALLITERATION. How glibly the pen of that old gourmand, Ben Jonsori, wrote " 1 inyseZf will have The beards of barbeZs served instead of saZads, OiZed mushrooms, and the sweZZing, unctious paps Of a fat pregnant sow, newZy cut off." Milton again " To sport with AmaryZZis in the shade. Or with the tangZes of Neaera's hair." Need I point out the charming echo in these lines ? Sometimes there is a musical ring in repetition " dance their whistZing ringZets in the wind." SHAKSPEARE. " And whan he rode, men mighte his bridaZ here, GingeZing in a whistZing wind as cZere, And eke as Zoude, as doth the chapeZZ beZZ." CHAUCER. " Hear the sZedges Avith their beZZs SiZverbeZZs! What a worZd of merriment their meZody foreteZZs ! How they tinkZe, tinkZe, tinkZe, In the icy air of night ! WhiZe the stars that oversprinkZe AZZ the heavens, seem to twinkZe With a crystaZZine deZight ; ALLITERATION. 193 Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musica% weZfe From the beWs, beZfe, beZZs, beWs, BeWs, beZfe, beZfe From the jingftng and the tinkling of the beZfe." POE. " My beautiful Annabel Zee." IBID. I might, in addition to these, make other selections, from various writers, but it is scarcely necessary. Doubt less many will suggest themselves to the reader. It is easy to quote texts in support of any theory, however fan ciful ; but these selections, embracing some of the most celebrated lines in the language, remarkable for sweetness and fluency, have one property in common they are all alliterations of the letter I. " And would you infer from that," quoth the reader, "it is necessary to have such alliterations in every poem, to make it pass muster ? " By no means ; I wish only to direct your attention to one element, which, as I have said before, is but a minor embellishment in versification. I have taken up a single let ter you have the whole alphabet before you, with imagi nation, fancy, humor, pathos, and sentiment to boot. If we do not know the value of a trochee, an anapaest, or an 194 ALLITERATION. iambus, then, as far as we are concerned, have Shakspearc, Milton, and Spenser written poetry in vain. They might as well have limited themselves to prose. " And do you think those great poets made these allit erations knowingly and systematically ? " Amigo mio, either they knew what they were doing, or they did not. If they merely blundered into beauty, then their merits have been somewhat overrated. I am inclined to believe those master weavers of verse understood the fab ric, woof and warp, quite as well as any threadbare critic or grammarian perhaps better. The poetic student will find many valuable hints in Ben Jonson's "Discoveries," from which I have quoted briefly. I will conclude this essay (the amusement of a long winter evening) by another excerpt from the same source. He says, speaking of poetry " The study of it (if we will trust Aristotle) offers to mankind a certain rule and pattern of living well and hap pily, disposing us to all civil offices of society. If we will believe Tully, it nourisheth and instruct eth our youth, de lights our age, adorns our prosperity, comforts our adver sity, entertains us at home, keeps us company abroad, travels with us, watches, divides the time of our earnest and sports, shares in our country recesses and recreations. ALLITERATION. 195 insomuch as the wisest and best learned have thought her the absolute mistress of manners, and nearest of kin to virtue. And whereas they entitle philosophy to be a rigid and austere poesy ; they have, on the contrary, styled poetry a dulcet and gentle philosophy, which leads on and guides us by the hand to action, with a ravishing delight, and incredible sweetness/' rare Ben Jonson ! ALB UM VERSES. LOYE .WITHOUT HOPE. LOVE without hope ! poor cheerless flower Come, in this hapless bosom rest : Whisper, at midnight's weary hour, " Though unrequited, not unblest." Teach me to love, and yet forego ; Teach me to wish, and yet forbear ; To hopeless live, and hopeless know The dead, dumb, sweetness of despair. Thus, in the calm lake's peaceful breast The golden clouds reflected rest ; But the mad waves more rashly woo, And lose the image they pursue. 198 ALBUM VERSES. TO SARAH. , in the ancient Hebrew, Meaneth " mistress, dame, or wife," So it seems your fate is settled, For the matrimonial life. Home, they say, is next to heaven, That's a thing well understood ; And, I think, Miss Sally You can make the adage good. But, while life is in its spring-time, Keep that little heart of thine Like some precious relic, hidden In a pilgrim-worshipped shrine. Though, from lips of fondest lover, Words of soft persuasion breathe, Let ten years at least roll over Ere you wear the orange-wreath. Ten good years, and then I'll wager Twenty thousand pounds upon it, Sweeter maid than Sarah, never Blushed beneath a bridal bonnet. ALBUM VERSES. 199 TO MARY. DEAR MARY, though these lines may fade, And drop neglected in the dust, Yet what I wish, my little maid, Will surely come to pass, I trust. May all that's purest, rarest, best, Be imaged ever in thy heart ; And may thy future years attest Thee innocent, as now thou art. Fair seem the flowers, fair seems the spring, Bright shines the sun the starry band, Life flies, with inexperienced wing, O'er blooming fields of Morning-land. But where yon rosy summit glows Forbear to tempt the aspiring flight, For storms those painted clouds enclose, And tempests beat yon glittering height, Ah, no the illusive wish forego This precept learn, by nature given, From mountain's tops, we gaze below, But in the vales, we look to heaven. 200 ALBUM VERSES. Then be thy guide the golden truth ; Keep thou thy heart serene and young ; And in thy age, as in thy youth, Thou'lt still be loved and still be sung. THE LAY-FIGUKE. TN the ancient city of Cordova, in one of its narrowest * streets (the Calle de San Pedro), there formerly lived an aged artist, by name Don Diego Gonzales. The two things he most prized in the world were his daughter and a lay-figure, the latter being at that time the only one in the city. And sooth to say, his passion for his lay-figure was such that it was produced in all his pictures, which made them to be sought after as those of an original and unique school, different from any thing in nature ; in fact, so much enamored was he of this thing of wood, canvas, and sawdust, that he scarcely thought of his daughter, whose eyes were like brown garnets, her waist like the stalk of a lily, and her lips like the cleft in a rose with the early dew on it. Truly the fable of Pygmalion was re- 202 THE LAY-FIGURE. vived in Calle de San Pedro, in the ancient city of Cor dova. Not far from his studio there lived a young painter, who had often seen the beautiful Isadora (for such was the name of Don Diego's daughter), as she went to mass and confession, and oftentimes he had sought in vain to pierce through the gloom of her lattice with his eyes, or meet her, in his visits to the old man. But all his efforts ended in disappointment, until, by dint of laying siege in regular form, that is by sonnets and sighs, accompanied by catgut and wire, he succeeded in ensnaring the bird ; I mean, he gained her heart completely. The old man took no notice of these tender affairs, so much occupied was he with his lay-figure. But for all that, Don Juan de Siempreviva knew very well there was no hope of obtaining Don Diego's consent ; the old man's experience with artists being such that I verily believe he would almost have burnt his be loved lay-figure before he would have given his daughter to the best of that profession in Cordova. Knowing, how ever, that kindness of heart was a prominent trait in Don Diego's character, Don Juan laid a plan to gain his ends. It was, to get the loan of the lay-figure ; and by dint of perseverance, not unmixed with flattery, he succeeded. Now, as it was the custom of Don Diego, after breakfast and THE LAY-FIGURE. 203 prayers to sit in his studio absorbed in his work until sies ta, and as most of the time the head of the lay-figure was covered by a cloth to keep it from the flies, it was agreed that Isadora should adopt the dress of the figure, cover her head with the cloth, take its place some morning, and thus be carried off by four stout porters to the lodgings of Don Juan, where the priest and all things being ready, the knot could be tied, and a trip to Madrid, followed by penitence and forgiveness, would make a very pretty little romantic affair, without doing harm to any body. The expected morning came at last, and you may be sure Don Juan waited with some impatience for his prize. At last the porters entered, bearing it upon a narrow plat form, and as soon as their backs were turned, he drew with impatience the cloth from the face, and beheld not the beautiful Isadora, but the waxen features of the lay-figure ! Isadora not being able to effect the change in time, the lay-figure was borne away, and I assure you the old man could not have vented more lamentable groans had it been in reality the body of his own daughter. Now surprising as it may seem, soon after, Don Juan became as much enamored of the lay-figure as Don Diego had been. It was the subject of all his studies, and the ideal that found a place in all his productions, so that the 204 THE LAY-FIGURE. connoisseurs of Cordova were puzzled with every new pic ture, some pronouncing it to be a genuine Gonzales, while others as stoutly maintained it to be a Siempreviva. In the meanwhile the beautiful Isadora, utterly neglected, pined alone within her chamber, without so much as a word or look from the faithless Don Juan. And the end of it was, there arose a deadly hatred between the old and the young artist concerning the lay-figure ; and there was a hostile meeting in the Paseo, outside the walls, in which Don Diego was killed ; and soon after Don Juan being ap prehended and executed, the beautiful Isadora died of grief. Her tomb is in the burial-place behind the great cathedral, with this inscription ; ' Joven, Bella, de todas adorada, Dejo la tierra por mejor morada.' But the lay-figure still remains ; and to this day you can find copies of it in many pictures in and out of Cordova. TO " T) RING-/' saith the Hindoo wife, "the flame/' -L) " And pile the crackling faggots high ; In joy and woe, in pride and shame, With thee I lived with thee I'll die In streams of fire my soul shall be Upborne to thee ! " So, round my heart, consuming love The dark, funereal pyre uprears ; Onward the rolling moments move, And Death the Merciful ! appears, But oh the bitter pang ! to be Removed from thee. Oh, could my heart again be still, Though 'twere the grave that held my mould, 206 TO I'd seek the shadowed mystery, The silent chamber, dark and cold ; Yet life dear life ! would priceless be If shared with thee. But now, the flames to ashes turn ; The wine to blood oh ghastly sight ! The pall half drapes the sculptured urn Where faintly burns yon spectral light, And shadowy phantoms beckon me Away from thee. Come to the house ! 'tis deadly still Sombre, and low, and chill, and wet, With earth-worms writhing o'er the sill, Earthy, and mouldy, smelleth it ; ; Tis mine my mansion reared for me By thee ! By thee ! MY BOY IN THE C O TJ N T K Y . METHINKS I see his head's round, silky crop, Like a blown thistle's top ! Or watch him walk with legs stretched wide apart, Dragging a small red cart ; Or hear his tiny treble, chirp in play, With, "0 go way !" Or, where the crystal eddies swirl the sand, I see him stand To plump the polished pebbles in the brook With steadfast look, While his wee, waggling head, with nothing on it But a sun-bonnet, Looks like the picture of a Capuchin A round frame in. Now with his tender fist he rubs his eye : " Plague take that fly!" 208 A SONNET. Or hovering Bessy claps a sudden veto On some moschito While he lies sleeping, in his shaded crib, Sans stocking, bib ; His toes curled up so sweet that I could eat 'em, How could I beat him ? How lay a finger on that soft brown skin, With many a blue vein interspersed therein ? A SONNET. A FIRST AND LAST ATTEMPT AT THIS SPECIES OF COMPOSITION. A SONNET ? Well, if it's within my ken, I'll write one with a moral ! When a boy, One Christmas day, I went to buy a toy, Or rather, " we/' I and my brother Ben ; And, as it chanced that day, I had but ten Cents in my fist, but as we walked " Be Goy Blamed ! if we didn't meet one Pat McCoy, An Irishman one of my father's men, Who four more gave, which made fourteen together. Just then I spied, in most unlucky minute, A pretty pocket wallet : like a feather My money buys it ! Ben, begins to grin it : " You're smart," says he, " you've got a heap of leather, But where's the cents you ought to ha' put in it ? " WIT AND HUMOK. TN attempting to define wit and humor, it is necessary L to premise, that they will be considered as active and independent faculties of the mind ; and not as abstract qualities, such as may be comprehended in a bon-mot or an epigram. In other words, the endeavor will be to arrive at the intention of the epigrammatist, not to discuss the merits of the epigram itself. For the forms of wit and humor are so various, it will scarcely be possible to form a just conclusion, except by separating the conception and intent, from the expression and the effect. Swift, it is said, is a witty writer. Why ? Because he wrote witty poerns. Why are the poems witty ? The answer is, be cause they were written by Swift. Very reasonable, to be sure ; but the object of this essay is to ascertain if there be not another solution to the last question. 210 WIT AND HUMOR. The great Swedish philosopher, Linngeus, or some other philosopher equally great, in attempting to classify the animal kingdom, found it rather perplexing to mark out the boundaries of the grander divisions. That, once accom plished, it was an easy and beautiful task to subdivide it into genera, species, and varieties. But animals would be alike in some respects, and differ in others, in spite of sci ence. Chickens flew, but so did bats and beetles. Chick ens and beetles laid eggs, bats would not ; but wingless terrapins did. Some animals had warm blood, some had cold, and yet, in other respects, were alike. Shad had scales, but the armadillo wore them also. Bears were covered with hair, and so were caterpillars and tarantulas. Geese had quills, penguins had none, but the porcupine had plenty. Elephants carried a flexible appendage at one end, and monkeys at the other. The giraffe fancied he could get along best by having his two longest legs in front, but the kangaroo preferred having them abaft. The female otter, living partly on the land, and partly in the water, nourished her young like the wife of the Rev. John Rogers ; but the pelican, with the same habits, had nothing to put into the mouths of young pelicans but fish. To find one property, which certain animals had. and others had not, was the question ; but how discover it in WIT AND HUMOR. 211 the apparent chaos of tastes ? At last the problem was solved : Shad, elephants, bats, armadillos, kangaroos, liad back-bones beetles, spiders, and terrapins had none. Their relative positions were at once defined. " The greater class," said Linnaeus with a wave of his hand, "shall be called ' vertebrata,' and, thank heaven, I am one of them." In like manner this attempt shall be, to express the generic definition of wit : and in like manner, the generic definition of humor ; so that, however variously presented, wit may be identified by some property common to all its species, and humor by one property common to all its varieties. It may be as well to observe here, in order to forewarn the reader, that although the subject may seem suggestive of mirth, it will be found a very serious one before he gets through with it. A gentleman who sometimes attempted essays, said he never felt so miserable as when he was writing one on happiness ; and therefore it is best, by a timely caution to suggest, that in this analysis of wit and humor, it must not be looked upon as a necessary consequence, for the writer to give any proofs of possessing, either faculty himself. With these brief remarks, I will proceed to a consider- 212 WIT AND HUMOR. ation- of the subject. The term " wit," in its eldest signi fication, implied generally "rationality" and so we still understand it in its derivations "to wit," (to know,) "half-witted," "witless," "witling," etc., etc. In the time of Dryden it expressed fancy, genius, aptitude. Thus the famous couplet " Great wits to madness surely are allied, And thin partitions -do their bounds divide," is almost an amplification of that "'fine frenzy" Shake speare has delineated, and " wit " in this sense is merely a synonyme of " imagination." Locke, who was cotemporary with Dryden, defines " wit " as lying most in the assem blage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or con- gruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy. This definition of wit he places in opposition to judgment, which he says " lies quite on the other side," in separating carefully one from another ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and by affinity to take one thing for another. Addison quotes this passage in the Spectator, and says : " This is, I think, the best and most philosophical account that I ever met with of wit, which generally, though not always, consists in such a resem- WIT AND HUMOR. 213 blance and congruity of ideas as this author mentions. I shall only add to it, by way of explanation, that every resemblance of ideas is not what we call wit, unless it be such an one that gives delight and surprise to the reader. These two last properties seem essential to wit, more par ticularly the last of them." To come down still later, Dugald Stewart endorses Locke, with this addition, (" rather/' as he says,- " by way of explanation than amendment,") that wit implies a power of calling up at pleasure the ideas which it combines ; and Lord Kames denominates wit a quality of certain thoughts and expres sions, and adds : " The term is never applied to an action or passion, and as little to an external object." From the preceding illustrations, we learn the term "wit" was not formerly used in its present limited sense : in fact, Addison gives us a list of different species of wit, such as " metaphors, similitudes, allegories, enigmas, para bles, fables, dreams, visions, dramatic writings, burlesque, and all methods of illusion," from which we may gather, in his time wit was an expression of considerable latitude, embracing all ideas of a fanciful or whimsical nature. Dr. Johnson describes wit " as a kind of concordia discours ; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike ; " which Leigh 214 WIT AND HUMOR. Hunt, in his essay on wit and humor, amplifies into " the arbitrary juxtaposition of dissimilar ideas, for some lively purpose of assimilation, or contrast, or generally of both." Why this would not apply as well to humor as to wit is not so apparent. It is scarcely fair to suspect Mr. Hunt did not quite understand the distinction between them himself. I could, in addition to those already named, quote many other authorities, but they would bring us no nearer to the points in question. The gist of all that has been said concerning the subject-matter is contained in the defi nitions already given. I must refer here, however, to one book, which is so admirable in its way, so full of the witty and humorous, so acute in detecting the errors of all other writers upon the subject, and so far from being right in its own solution of the question, that the perusal of it pro duces the very effect which its author claims to be the end of all. wit, namely, "surprise!" The "Lectures on Moral Philosophy," by the Reverend Sydney Smith, as an exemplar of wit, has no superior in our language ; but when he tells us that " whenever there is a superior act of intelligence in discovering a relation between ideas, which relation excites surprise, and no other high emotion, the mind will have a feeling of wit," we must beg leave to WIT AND HUMOR. 215 differ from the conclusion ; for wit sometimes excites ad miration, which may be considered a high emotion ; and we have known instances where it has produced a feeling of implacable revenge. In the example which he gives immediately after, he says : " Why is it witty, in one of Addison's plays, when the undertaker reproves one of his mourners for laughing at a funeral, and says to him : ' You rascal, you ! I have been raising your wages for these two years, upon condi tion that you should appear more sorrowful, and the higher wages you receive, the happier you look ! ' Here is a rela tion between ideas, the discovery of which implies supe rior intelligence, and excites no other emotion than ( sur prise.' " Now the incongruousness of ideas here is calculated to raise an emotion of mirth as well as surprise, and we are pleased, not because it is witty, but because the accidental ambiguity of the words turns the reproof into a jest. True wit is never accidental, but always intentional. Compare the above with the following, which would be humorous if it were not very witty : "A gentleman owned four lots adjoining a Jewish burying-ground, in the upper part of the city. The owners of the cemetery wanted to purchase these lots, but as the price they offered was no 216 WIT AND HUMOR. equivalent for their value, the gentleman refused to accept it. At last the trustees hit upon what they considered a master-stroke of policy, and meeting Mr. V a few days afterward, said : ' Ah, Sir, we tink you will not get any body now to live on your property up dere. We have buyed lots on de odder side, and behint, and it's Jews' burying-ground all around it/ ' Very well/ replied Mr. V- , ' I shall begin to build to-morrow/ ' Build ! ' echoed the trustees, taken aback by the cool manner in which this was said, c why, now,' with a cunning smile. ( what can you put up dere, mit a Jews' burying-ground all around ?' ' A surgeon's hall ! ' replied Mr. V . f Just think how convenient it will be ! You have made my property the most desirable in the neighborhood. Good morning/ The reader may imagine Mr. V received his own price for the lots, which were speedily converted into a Golgotha, and the principal trustee now lies buried in the midst of them, with a white marble monument protruding out of his bosom, large enough to make a resurrection-man commit suicide." In his definition of humor the Kev. Sydney Smith says : " So, then, this turns out to be the nature of humor ; that it is incongruity which creates surprise, and only sur- WIT AND HUMOR. 217 prise. Try the most notorious and classical instances of humor by this rule, and you will find it succeed/' If this be the nature of humor, namely, " that it is in congruity which creates surprise," we will try the rule, and see how it agrees with the assertion. In the tragedy of King Lear, when the poor old monarch finds Kent in the stocks he says : " Ha! Mak'st thou this sport thy pastime ? " And this exclamation is caused by a feeling of incon gruity, for he discovers Kent has been treated in a manner directly opposite to what he expected, and the sudden clash of the two contending ideas produces surprise. By the application of the above rule, this should be humorous, but I confess it is difficult to believe it. Let us take another example : Macbeth is assured, in the witches' cavern, that " none of woman born shall harm Macbeth ! " and again : " Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill Shall come against him." Yet when Birnam wood does come to Dunsinane, in a most accountable manner ; and afterwards he hears Mac- 218 WIT AND HUMOR. duff had entered the world by the Csesarean operation, he does not seem particularly struck with the humor of the thing, nor is he giving way to a burst of hilarity at the un expected relation of ideas, when he utters : " Accursed be the tongue that tells me so, For it hath cowed my better part of man ; And be these juggling fiends no more believed, That palter with us in a double sense ; That keep the word of promise to our ear. And break it to our hope." The truth is, surprise is sometimes the effect of wit or humor, and nothing more ; and we cannot predicate of wit that it is surprise, any more than we can predicate of a triangle that it is equilateral. Let us now consider the second part of our subject. Like wit, the meaning of the term, "Humor," has changed, and we seek in vain for any correspondence be tween its present, and former significance. Thus Ben Jon- son's " Every man in his Humor," is equivalent to every one to his taste, " chacun d son gout," it implied whim sies, fancies, conceits (such as we find in Corporal Nym), temper, turn of mind, petulance, etc., etc. By Addison it was used as a synonyme of wit, but rarely, and it is only within a few years that the word humor has been used as the WIT AND HUMOR. 219 generic term of a peculiar class of ideas. I have already given the Keverend Sydney Smith's definition, and shall add here that of Leigh Hunt, which certainly is a very dif ferent thing from wit as we understand it. " Humor, considered as the object treated of by the hu morous writer, and not as the power of treating it, derives its name from the prevailing quality of moisture in the bodily temperament ; and is a tendency of the mind to run in particular directions of thought or feeling more amusing than accountable, at least in the opinion of so ciety." I opine that nothing short of a patent digester can make any thing of this definition. With all deference to the author of " Kimini," I am compelled to believe he has no more idea of humor, than a Bush-boy has of clairvoyance. Taking out " the quality of moisture in the bodily tempera ment," which is slightly irrelevant, and straightening the involution of the sentence, it stands thus : " Humor, con sidered as the object treated of, is a tendency of the mind to run in particular directions of thought or feeling more amusing than accountable." If this be not the very idea of humor the Philistines had, when they called for Samson to make them sport, then I am much, very much mistaken. For when we cease to consider humor as an active principle. 220 WIT AND HUMOR. and only discover it in the weakness of one, who may be making that sport for us, which is death to him, we must reflect, it is the ludicrous association of ideas in our own minds that produces the effect. Thus, although the antics of a monkey, contrasted with the remarkable gravity of his physiognomy, may make us laugh, we can scarcely accuse him of being a humorist ; but if a man have a monkey running loose in his mind, and imitate him, then we may safely set him down as one. In the Westminster Review for October, 1847, there is a criticism upon this very essay from which I take the follow ing : " Humor is felt to be a higher, finer, and more genial thing than wit, or the mere ludicrous ; but the exact de finition of it has occasioned some difficulty. It is the com bination of the laughable with an element of love, tender ness, sympathy, warm-heartedness, or affection. Wit, sweetened by a kind, loving expression, becomes humor. Men who have little love to their fellows, or whose lan guage and manner are destitute of affectionateness, and soft, tender feeling, cannot be humorists, however witty they may be. There is no humor in Butler, Pope, Swift, Dry- den, Ben Jonson, or Voltaire." In estimating humor, let us admit this passage, with some grains of allowance ; upon the whole it is ingenious WIT AND HUMOK. 221 and elegant, as a description of humor, perhaps the best that can be found. I have thus shown what has already been said in re gard to the subject, by way of clearing the ground for the definitions which follow : Wit, is an operation of the mind directing the action of the ludicrous, for the attainment of some specific object. Humor, is an operation of the mind directing the action of the ludicrous to the production of mirth. And herein humor differs from wit, which always has an ultimate object beyond the mere mirth it creates. Thus, wit is antagonistic humor, genial. Wit is con centrated, sharp, rapier-like ; humor, prodigal, diffuse ; in fact, the very wantonness of mirth. Wit converges to a focus, like a lens. Humor distorts, multiplies, and grotesquely colors like a prism. Wit is always percep tive ; humor may be conscious or unconscious ; a man is very much in earnest with himself, and yet we see his words or actions in a humorous light, like the odd reflections made by an imperfect mirror. Such men are unconscious humorists ; what seems ludicrous to us, is very sad reality to them ; and often, when we get a glimpse of their inner nature, even while the smile is yet upon our lips, we feel a touch of pity as deep as tears. 222 WIT AND HUMOR. Mr. Kichard Swiveller, wending his way home after " a night " with Mr. Quilp and the case-bottle, may be taken as a fair specimen of an unconscious humorist. " Left by my parents at an early age," said Mr. Swiv- eller, bewailing his hard lot, " cast upon the world in my tenderest period, and thrown upon the mercies of a delud ing dwarf, who can wonder at my weakness ! " " Here's a miserable orphan for you. Here," said Mr. Swiveller raising his voice to a high pitch and looking sleepily round, "is a miserable orphan." Now an actor to represent this, or an author to deline ate it, would be a conscious humorist. Humor and pathos are often twin-born. What is natural, homely, child-like ; little episodes of smiles and tears, " Dreams of our earliest, purest, happiest years," are inextricably blended with these divine emotions. I cannot forbear copying entire those beautiful lines by Oliver Wendell Holmes, " The Last Leaf," so finely il lustrative of both. " I saw him omje before, As he passed by the door, And again The pavement stones resound WIT AND HUMOR. 223 As he totters o'er the ground With his cane. " They say that in his prime, Ere the pruning knife of Time Cut him down, Not a better man was found By the crier on his round Through the town. " But now he walks the streets, And he looks on all he meets Sad and wan ; And he shakes his feeble head, That it seems as if he said, They are gone. " The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he hasprest In their bloom, And the names he loved to Jiear Have ~been caned for many a year On the tomb. " My grandmamma has said, Poor old lady she is dead Long ago, That he had a Roman nose, And his cheek was like a rose In the snow. 224 WIT AND HUMOR. " But now his nose is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff; And a crook is in his back, And a melancholy crack In his laugh. "I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here ; But his old three-cornered hat, And his breeches, and all that, Are so queer ! " And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree, In the spring ; Let them smile, as I do now, At the old forsaken bough, Where I cling." Here is indeed humor and pathos blended. But there is no such thing as pathetic wit. Perhaps nothing marks the boundary line between wit' and humor more accurately than this. Let me add another distinction. Satire, whether for good or evil, is a tremendous implement a cautery, actual and potential. See its effect in Punch (which I take to be the most influential political paper in the world) ; what WIT AND HUMOR. 225 refuge is there for the offender, when Prentice launches his glittering arrow from the Louisville Journal ? How can Mr. Deuceace answer the charge preferred against him by Mr. Chawles Yellowplush ? What now, and for ever, is the world's opinion of " His Grace, the Duke of Grafton/' after the letters of Junius ? But satire is a property of wit not of humor ; we may ridicule a man, but there is no such word as " ludicrize " in the language. In support of the first postulate, viz., that wit always has some object beyond the mere creation of mirth, let us select Hudibras as an example. This unrivalled poem abounds in passages of exquisite wit and humor. The de scription of the knight himself is perhaps the most felicitous mingling of both that can be found in the whole range of English literature. I might glean from it a golden sheaf of quotations, simply illustrative of the humorous, although Hudibras is generally considered " pure wit." And so it is, as a whole. When we take in view the object for which it was written, when we remember its intention, and its effect upon the Puritans of those days, then every ab surdity brightens into points of keenest satire, the pages fairly blaze with . wit, and its burning ridicule is almost appalling. Pope's Dunciad, Dryden's MacFlecnoe, and Byron's 226 WIT AND HUMOR. English Bards and Scottish Ee viewers, are the only com positions in our language that deserve to he classed with Hudibras. They belong to the heroic school of wit ; epics, compared with every thing else of a similar nature ; and as holding the highest rank, we can safely estimate by each and every one of them the value of the above proposition. As in the physical world we find connecting links be tween the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, so in the world of letters we find compositions which combine wit, fancy, and imagination. For example, in the follow ing epigram : " Bright as the Sun, and, as the Morning, fair ; Such Cloe is but common as the Air ! " The direct compliment in the first line, so strikingly reversed by the satire of the second, would be ludicrous but for the fanciful elegance of the whole. In the definition of wit, the ludicrous is assumed to be a necessary element. I take this word for want of one more expressive in our language. I use it to represent the "essence of mirth ;" as a principle, larger and more com prehensive than " ridicule." This principle I hold to be latent in all kinds of wit. Whether it come in the shape of compliment or satire, somebody feels the divine emotion of mirth. Whether in the stiletto innuendo, or the sharp, WIT AND HUMOR. 227 small-sword repartee ; whether it lie, like salt, on the tail of an epigram, or baffle wisdom in the intricate pun, some body may smart, but somebody will smile. Even in the graceful form of compliment, wit demands this tribute. At the time Pope borrowed the diamond from Chesterfield, and wrote, on a wine-glass, " Accept a miracle instead of wit ; See two dull lines by Stanhope's pencil writ ;" imagine the faces around that table. When the " Kape of the .Lock" was written, imagine its effect in the fashion able circles of that age. When Henry of Navarre presented one of his Generals to some foreign Ambassadors, and said, " Gentlemen, this is the Marechal de Biron, whom I present equally to my friends and enemies/' imagine the secret emotion that every Frenchman felt in that courtly circle. And when the Spanish Minister was shocked at the famili arity of. certain officers, who were pressing around that chivalric King, although the reply may remind us of Ivry and the white plume ; yet that gallant speech " You see nothing here ; you should see how close they press upon me in the day of battle," must have awakened in those offi cers a sensation, better expressed in their faces, than in the plastic countenance of the Spaniard. Let me select another specimen the generous example 228 WIT AND HUMOR. of Lord Dorset, who, when several celebrated men were debating about harmony of numbers, beauties of invention, etc., proposed to make a trial of skill, of which Dry den was to be the judge. His Lordship's composition obtained the preference. It was as follows : " I promise to pay JOHN DRYDEN, Esq., or order, on demand, the sum of five hundred pounds. DORSET." There is a kind of legal wit, too, in Blackstone, deserv ing of notice, such as his definition of special bailiffs, who, he says, " are usually bound in a bond for the due execu tion of their office, and thence are called bound bailiffs: which the common people have corrupted into a much more homely appellation." I admire this pleasant evasion of an unsavory phrase. The laconic note of Dorset is in happy opposition to one written by Frederic the Great. A Jew banker, who, fearful of subsidies and loans, sent a letter, petitioning the King, " to allow him to travel for his health," received in *&> answer : "Dear Ephraim, nothing but death shall part us. FREDERIC.'' While we cannot fail to perceive, in all the above ex amples, that element which we call the ludicrous, or mirth- moving power, yet we find in each and every one a pur- WIT AND HUMOR. 229 pose ; the arrow is not shot into the air ; it is aimed at the blank. We recognize it in compliment, we feel it in innuendo, we detect it in irony, it stings in the epigram, and sparkles in repartee, and. still we apprehend it as wit ; Wit ! the younger and more polished brother of that, which has but one name humor good humor. Whoever is familiar with the writings of Jean Paul Kichter, will recognize, in the following, a page from an admirable book, "Flower, Fruit, and Thorn-Pieces." It is an example of that kind of humor which is the divine philosophy of a sensitive heart. Germans are the most analytical of modern writers. Let us illustrate this sub ject by a quotation from one of the best : " Siebenkas was all day long a harlequin. She (his wife) often said to him, ' The people will think you are not in your right senses ;.' to which he would answer, e And am I ? ' He disguised his beautiful heart beneath the grotesque comic mask, and concealed his height by the trodden-down sock ; turning the short game of his life into a farce and comic epic poem. He was fond of grotesque cornic actions from higher motives than mere variety. 'In the first place, he delighted in the sense of freedom expe rienced by a soul unshackled by the trammels of circum stance ; and secondly, he enjoyed the satirical conscious- ^230 WIT AND HUMOR. ness of caricaturing rather than imitating the follies of humanity. While acting he had a twofold consciousness : that of the comic actor and of the spectator. A humorist in action is but a satirical improvisator e. Every male reader understands this ; but no female reader. I have often wished to give a woman, who beheld the white sunbeam of wisdom decomposed, checkered, and colored from behind the prism of humor, a well-ground glass which would burn this variegated row of colors white again ; but it would not answer. The woman's delicate sense of the becoming is scratched and wounded, so to say, by every thing angular and unpolished. These souls bound up to the pole of conventional propriety, cannot compre hend a soul which opposes itself to these relations ; and therefore in the hereditary realms of women the courts, and in their kingdom of shadows France, there are seldom any humorists to be found, either of the pen or in real life." But of all creations of humor, what is there to com pare with the hero of Cervantes? Don Quixote may move us to mirth by his guileless simplicity, but his nature is noble, beyond any artifice of mere wit. For the spring of all his actions is what we most admire in humanity valor, love of justice, patience and fortitude ; even his want of prudence is almost a virtue. Strange that -it should WIT AND HUMOR. 231 excite our laughter to behold the aberrations of an enthu siast, who believed himself to be "the defender of the innocent, the protector of helpless damsels, the shield of the defenceless, and the avenger of the oppressed/' " What story is so pleasing and so sad." Is there not something in this madness nearer heaven than much of worldly wisdom ? But in our admiration of the relics of chivalric life, who can forget thee, thou modestest of men, " My Uncle Toby ? " What is more admirable than thy goodness of heart, thy tenderness, thy patience of injuries, thy peace ful, placid nature, " no jarring element in it f which was mixed up so kindly within thee ; thou hadst scarcely a heart to retaliate upon a fly ! " " I'll not hurt thee," says my Uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going across the room with the fly in his hand ; " I'll not hurt a hair of thy head. Go," says he, lifting up the sash and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape ; "go, poor devil ! get thee gone, why should I hurt thee ? this world is surely wide enough to hold both thee and me." In direct opposition to this stands the character of burly Falstaif. No one would lay a straw in the way of 232 WIT AND HUMOR. Uncle Toby, but how we relish u the buck-basket/' the " cudgel of Ford," and the castigation at " Gadshill ; " nay, if we bear in mind how exquisitely selfish Falstaif is, we can even admire the reply of King Harry, beginning- wit h : " I know thee not, old man : fall to thy prayers. How ill white hairs become a fool and jester." Such is the nature of wit. We love Charles Lamb, Goldsmith, Irving, Fielding, Dickens, our young, admirable humorist, Shelton, and glorious Dan Chaucer ; but we have no such feeling toward Pope, Swift, Dryden, Chester field, or. the author of "Vanity Fair."* Dante at tunes is witty, and his wit is tremendous ! In his journey through hell he meets the shade of a friar, who tells him, that the soul of a living man, one " Branca Doria, who murdered his father-in-law, Zanche," is there. " Nay," replies Dante, " you do not tell the truth. Branca Doria is on earth ; eats, walks and sleeps like any other man." " Nevertheless," returns the friar, " his soul has been * Personally, Mr. Thackeray is one of the most genial and amiable of men. But however brilliant his wit, it has no warm, sunny side. He succeeds in creating very detestable people in his novels, for whom one does not feel the least sympathy. The satire, however, is perfect. WIT AND HUMOR. 233 many years here in hell, and in place of it, a devil inhabits his body above."* Coleridge's remarks, written on the cover of Charles Lamb's copy ^ of Donne's Satires, which I give briefly, are severely witty : " The irregular measure of this verse is only convertible into harmony by the feeling of the reader. I would like to hear a Scotchman read Donne.* If he read it as it should be read, I would think, either that he was not in reality a Scotchman, or that his soul had been geo graphically slandered by his body." We must not consider, however, this caustic quality as inseparable from wit. True, in all the forms of innuendo, satire, irony, and epigram, we may discover it ; but hap pily, there is a species of wit as innocent as it is delightful. Perhaps there is nothing more agreeable than being in com pany with a person who possesses this faculty, with suffi cient amiability and good sense to keep it in subjection ; the perfection of strength is in the reserve of power ; and he is an exquisite swordsman who can disarm, with out wounding, his adversary. If, in this essay I have touched but lightly upon the innocency of wit, which certainly is its most charming at- * "This," says Leigh Hunt, "is the most tremendous lampoon, as far as I am aware, in the whole circle of literature," I believe it. 234 WIT AND HUMOR. tribute, it is because instances are rare, and we should be chary in commending too much a faculty, which sometimes has the power to turn even u a mother's pains and benefits, To laughter and contempt." Thus while we enjoy " converse calm, with wit shafts sprinkled round, Like beams from gems, too light and fine to wound," we must make a reservation in favor of a more genial qual ity ; not that we love wit less, but that we love humor more : for humor is of nature, and wit is of artifice. The limits of an essay will not permit any further con sideration of this fruitful subject, else I might name one whose wit is such that " 'tis a common opinion that all men love him." " That last half stanza it has dashed From my warm lip the sparkling cup ; The light that o'er my eyebeam flashed, The power that bore my spirit up Above this bank-note world is gone," I trust is not prophetic ; for in the -whole wide world lives WIT AND HUMOR. 235 not one possessed of such powers of wit, humor and fancy, as he ; nor is there any one to whom his own lines will ap ply better : " ISTone knew thee, but to love thee, None named thee, but to praise." 16 7 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW RENEWED BOOKS ARE SUBJECT TO IMMEDIATE RECALL LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS Book Slip-55m-10,'68(J4048sS)458 A-ol. 5 466550 Cozzens, F.S. Prismatics. PS 1449 C65 P7 LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS