THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Mary Randall 
 
'/,' ' 
 
 w J 
 
 
 nap\ 
 
STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 "TWO MARRIAGES," "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN,' 
 
 "A NOBLE LIFE," "CHRISTIAN'S MISTAKE," 
 
 " OLIVE," "A LIFE FOR A LIFE," 
 
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 GIFT 
 
C8B7 
 
 CONTENTS, 
 
 OLD STONES 9 
 
 SILENCE FOR A GENERATION 32 
 
 GOING OUT TO PLAY 47 
 
 "WANT SOMETHING TO READ" 67 
 
 WAR-SPARKLES 87 
 
 AN OLD SOLDIER'S COMING HOME 110 
 
 POOR PEOPLE'S CHILDREN 126 
 
 TRAVELING COMPANIONS \ 152 
 
 THROUGH THE POWDER-MILLS 165 
 
 BROTHER JONATHAN'S PET 180 
 
 LITERARY GHOULS 197 
 
 ABOUT MOTIIERS-IN-LAW 217 
 
 OUR LOST CAT 232 
 
 MY BABES IN THE WOOD 246 
 
 THE MAN OP MEN 258 
 
 LOST 279 
 
 M854167 
 
STUDIES FROM LIFE, 
 
 <8>U Stones. 
 
 " NONSENSE ! Who on earth would take such 
 a journey" it was forty miles across country, or 
 sixty odd if you went round by rail " just to see 
 a heap of old stones !" 
 
 So grumbled our host,, whose "bark was waur 
 than his bite," who always said the unkindest 
 things and did the kindest. Of course we never 
 fretted ourselves about the matter; we knew we 
 should go. 
 
 It had been the dream of youth to us all, indulged 
 hopelessly for well, I had better not say how many 
 years, since, though to the youngest now our mer- 
 ry hostess, and mother of our host's three boys 
 time did not so much matter, we two elders, who 
 had not made quite such good use of it, might pos- 
 sibly be sensitive on the subject. Time? Pshaw! 
 we plucked the old fellow by the beard and laughed 
 at him, all three of us. . He had only made us wiser, 
 and richer, and merrier ; we did not grudge him one 
 A2 
 
10 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 year out of the many that had slipped away since 
 we used to sit in short frocks, and frilled trowsers. 
 and long plaited tails of hair, poring over Penny 
 Magazines and juvenile Tours through England, 
 which confirmed us, as I said, in the longing to 
 see Stonehenge, of all places in the world our 
 " world," which then, in wildest dreams, extended 
 not beyond the British Islands. 
 
 We never had seen it; not though, since then, 
 some of us had gone up and down Europe till we 
 had come to talk of the Alps and Italy with a 
 hand-in-glove familiarity quite appalling; though 
 to others the "ends of the world" had at second- 
 hand been brought so close that the marvelous 
 Peter Botte Mountain, about which we drank in so 
 many (ahem !) fabulosities in the said Penny Maga- 
 zine, and Cape Horn, of gloomy horror, and the de- 
 licious Pacific Islands, on which we so desperately 
 longed to be cast away as youthful Eobinson Cru- 
 soes, had dwindled into everyday things. Yet still, 
 still we had never seen Stonehenge. 
 
 As the idea was started, and we canvassed it over 
 the tea-table, the dream of our girlhood revived, 
 with all the delicious mystery and ingenious con- 
 jectures that attended it, and the wild hope struck 
 out of the infinite belief of youth in every thing, 
 and, above all, in itself that if we only once got a 
 sight of it, who knew but that we actually WE ! 
 might be the happy individual to set forever at rest, 
 
OLD STONES. 11 
 
 by some lucky suggestion, the momentous question, 
 Who built Stonehenge ? 
 
 A " heap of old stones !" We scouted the phrase 
 with even youthful indignation ; we protested that 
 it had been the desire of our lives, that we would 
 any of us cheerfully travel any how, any when, any 
 where to see Stonehenge. Then, like wise women, 
 we let the matter rest ; we knew we should go. 
 
 Our plan germinated a day or so in wholesome si- 
 lence, till we saw its first leaf peering above ground 
 in the shape of a Bradshaw which, quite par hasard, 
 our host was apparently studying. 
 
 "Oh!" observed he apropos of nothing. "It 
 would take a long day a very long day." 
 
 " What would ?" somebody said hypocritically. 
 
 "I thought you wanted to see Stonehenge?" 
 
 We smothered our joy ; we were meek over our 
 triumph ; we even as days were precious to the 
 masculine portion of the household acquiesced 
 humbly in the proposal that we should " make a 
 long day of it" that is to say, from six A.M. to 
 about twelve P.M., including a journey by coach 
 and rail of about 110 miles, if even by those slightly 
 arduous means we might purchase an hour or two 
 among our " old stones." 
 
 Patience prospered ; resignation won. The very 
 next day we four three womenkind, on whom, as 
 we have passed the season when we care to be the 
 three Graces, I may as well bestow, pro tern., the 
 
12 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 names of the three Virtues, Faith, Hope, and Char- 
 ity under escort of Hope's husband found our- 
 selves clattering over the stones of our little town, 
 which within two hours fully informed itself of our 
 excursion and plans in all particulars, many of them 
 quite unknown to ourselves. No matter ; we were 
 very happy, even when Fate, according to her cus- 
 tom a wise one, doubtless dashed our joys with 
 a pelting rain, tore us from post traveling and from 
 the breezy heaths, redolent for miles and miles of 
 the apricot-scented gorse, to thrust us into a railway 
 carriage, where we had our choice of being smoth- 
 ered or soaked. 
 
 Still no matter; not though we had to make a 
 circumbendibus which would occupy the whole of 
 the afternoon, and land us in Salisbury just time 
 enough to go to bed ; not though the delicious drive 
 across country was put an end to, and we were jolt- 
 ed and smothered, hungry and wet (likewise dry, 
 very !), laboring under every traveling woe except 
 ill-humor. As we laughed, our troubles lightened ; 
 and when, toward dusk, we saw westward a red 
 streak peering through the dun sky, and birds be- 
 gan to sing out cheerily in the green, dripping trees, 
 we gloried in all our conquered disasters, for we 
 said, "It is sure to be a fine day to-morrow." 
 
 And when, opening the carriage window, one of 
 us heard, through the stillness of the rainy twilight, 
 
 " The faint and frail Cathedral chimes 
 Fpeak time in music'," 
 
OLD STONES. 13 
 
 we felt, we knew, that we were near Salisbury ; that 
 to-morrow we should see Stonehenge. 
 
 No chance of the Cathedral that night ; but we 
 saw above the houses its exquisitely delicate spire ; 
 and once again, as we sat over the welcomest of tea- 
 suppers in the inn parlor, we caught the chimes, 
 11 faint and frail;" and Hope, who used once to be 
 the most romantic of us all, and in whom even mat- 
 rimony had not quite suppressed that amiable weak- 
 ness, took out boldly her pet poem, The Angel in the 
 House, and declared her intention of rising at some 
 unearthly hour next morning to hunt out the dean's 
 house, where it is supposed the " angel" abode pre- 
 vious to being caught and carried away to the au- 
 thor's. She would find it, she knew, in "Sarum 
 Close :" 
 
 "Red brick and ashlar, long and low, 
 
 With dormer and with oriels lit : 
 Geranium, lychnis, rose, array'd 
 
 The windows, all wide open thrown, 
 And some one in the study play'd 
 
 The wedding-march of Mendelssohn." 
 
 Gathering all this admirable evidence for identify- 
 ing nothing ! we laid our plans, took one peep out 
 on the street, where the pavement glittered, shiny 
 with rain, under the gas lamps, and above a queer 
 black gable out peered the brightest, softest new 
 moon then we all went to bed as merry as chil- 
 dren. Out upon old Time! were we not at heart 
 
14 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 just as young as ever, and going to Stonehenge to- 
 morrow ? 
 
 AND WE WENT. I beg to chronicle this in capi- 
 tals as a remarkable corroboration of the proverb, 
 " Wish for a gown o' gowd, and ye'll aye get a 
 sleeve o't ;" and to show that people do sometimes 
 gain what they wish, if they have patience to wait 
 for it twenty years or so. We went. 
 
 It was an exquisite morning ; fresh after the rain, 
 breezy and bright, with clouds scudding now and 
 then over the May sun, threatening us just enough 
 to make us protest that we didn't care. It might 
 rain and welcome in an hour or two but we should 
 be at Stonehenge. Even if we saw it humiliating 
 position ! from under umbrellas, see it we should 
 and would. 
 
 So we dashed along the quiet morning street, 
 where the respectable inhabitants of Sarum were 
 just breakfasting, little recking of insane tourists, 
 wild over their familiar "old stones." Even our 
 driver, honest man, as he took us through "the 
 close and sultry lane" vide Angel in the House, 
 which we again referred to turned round once or 
 twice with a patronizing air to answer topograph- 
 ical questions, and then cracked his whip solemn- 
 ly, as if proud that he wasn't so foolish as some 
 people. 
 
 Foolish indeed! but it was a holy intoxication, 
 brought on by the fresh, breezy, dewy light, bath- 
 
OLD STONES. 15 
 
 ing the whole spring-world. How beautiful was 
 that world, with the sky full of larks and the air 
 of hawthorn-scent, with acres upon acres of cham- 
 paign land green with growing wheat, waving and 
 shimmering in the sun a sea of verdurous plenty. 
 How strange, like a bit of ancient history made 
 visible, looked Old Sarum a perfect Eoman camp, 
 with its regular lines and fosses now thick-sown 
 with trees, amid which, for centuries back, we learn- 
 ed, still lurked a house or two no more. 
 
 " Yet that place," remarked Hope's husband, with 
 severe modern practicality "that place actually, 
 till the Eeform Bill, sent two members to Parlia- 
 ment!" 
 
 We laughed, and pondered how much the world 
 had mended since the times of the Romano-Britons, 
 and so drove on, to a perpetual chorus of larks a 
 chorus dropping upon us from the white clouds 
 who sang over us just as they sang over the heads 
 of those grim warriors throwing up the green walls 
 of Old Sarum. 
 
 Salisbury Plain. Familiar as a proverb the place 
 is. Of a bleak spot one hears, " As bare as Salis- 
 bury Plain;" of being shelterless in the rain, "Might 
 as well have been out on Salisbury Plain." All im- 
 ages of dreary desolation and flat uniformity gath- 
 ered around it ; and one thinks of that celebrated 
 hero of the Religious Tract Society, the " Shepherd 
 of Salisbury Plain," with a mixture of sympathy 
 
16 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 and veneration. Yes, we were now on Salisbury 
 Plain. 
 
 A strange place, surely ; not flat, as we had ex- 
 pected, but rising and falling in long low waves of 
 land inclosed wheat-land for a considerable way, 
 till fences and cultivation cease, and you find your- 
 self in the midst of a vast expanse, lying bare un- 
 der the sky, as far as eye can reach, in all direc- 
 tions one undulating sea of intense emerald green. 
 Nothing, except the sea, ever gave me such a sense 
 of solitude, stillness, and desolation, quiet, not pain- 
 ful : nature's desolation is never painful. You hear 
 no birds, for there are no trees to sing in ; nay, the 
 larks have ceased, or are heard indistinctly far away 
 over the wheat -fields; an occasional bee alone 
 comes buzzing over the short turf, the flowers of 
 which, dainty, curious, and small, are chiefly of a 
 scentless kind, such as saxifrage, tiny yellow lotos, 
 and primrose-colored hawkweed. Now and then, 
 every mile or so, you see, lying at anchor in a 
 hollow, or steering across the Plain like a fleet of 
 white sails whose course you can track for miles, 
 what you know must be a flock of sheep. Or you 
 come upon them close, and the little brown-faced 
 shepherd takes off his cap with a nod and a smile, 
 and his shaggy dog just lifts up his lazy head to 
 look at you ; then you leave them all, flock, shep- 
 herd, and dog, to a solitude which seems as com- 
 plete as that of an Arab in the desert, or a ship far 
 out at sea. 
 
OLD STONES. 17 
 
 And this is Salisbury Plain ; and in its centre lies 
 that extraordinary circle of stones about which, let 
 antiquaries prate as they will, nobody really knows 
 any thing whatever. 
 
 As we ascended and descended ridge after riclge 
 of the waves of land, we all stretched anxious eyes 
 east, west, north, and south. Who would be the 
 first to catch sight of Stonehenge ? We scorned to 
 inquire of the driver where to look ; we felt sure 
 we should recognize it at once ; but on we went, 
 and ever so many imaginary " old stones" did our 
 satirical escort point out to our eager notice as the 
 veritable Stonehenge. 
 
 At last he said, with a quiet air of unquestionable 
 superiority, "That's it: there are your old stones." 
 
 "Where?" "Oh, please, where?" "Yes, where?" 
 cried in different and yet concurring tones Hope, 
 Faith, and Charity, the latter being mild even in 
 her enthusiasm : she had seen Mont Blanc and a 
 few other trifles. 
 
 " There !" 
 
 "Oh!" "Ah!" "Well!" 
 
 I grieve to confess that these ejaculations were 
 not enthusiastic ! Did ever the thing attained seem 
 in the moment of winning half so grand as when 
 unattained, possibly unattainable? Nay, as our 
 poetical friend observes not too politely of his 
 "angel" (the book's corner peered still out of 
 Hope's pocket) : 
 
18 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 "The whole world's wealthiest and its best, 
 
 So fiercely follow'd, seem'd, when found, 
 Poor in its need to be possess'd 
 Poor from its very want of bound." 
 
 Alas! whether from the vastness of the Plain, which 
 made the gigantic stones seem small from the want 
 of something to compare them with, or whether 
 youthful imagination had like " vaulting ambition 
 o'erleaped its selle," and fell prone by the side of 
 ordinary and possible fact, certain it is that nothing 
 but the shame and dread of being crowed over by 
 superior masculine wisdom prevented our confess- 
 ing ourselves disappointed in our first sight of 
 Stonehenge. 
 
 But afterward, as often happens and, let us hope, 
 happened with our poet and his "angel" coming 
 nearer, its grandeur and beauty grew upon us, till, 
 by the time our horses stopped and drew up under 
 the large shadow of one of the " Druid (?) rocks," 
 we descended, silenced by their sublimity. 
 
 It has been described scores of times this ex- 
 traordinary circle, or rather series of circles one 
 within another, varying in size, from the outer 
 stones, which are all of silicious sandstone, appar- 
 ently about fifteen feet in height and six or seven 
 in diameter, to the inner ones, of granite, and net 
 beyond the size of a man ; and the two great centre 
 trilithons, which still stand, erect and uninjured, 
 over the large flat stone of blue lias which is sup- 
 posed to have been the sacrificial altar. 
 
OLD STONES. 19 
 
 These minutioa we neither observed nor heeded 
 then. With an involuntary quietness, unbroken 
 even by the sunshiny wind, rough enough to make 
 hats weigh heavy on our minds, and only too light 
 on our craniums, and sharp enough to cause a glad 
 recollection of lunch in a basket in spite of these 
 human weaknesses, we all felt a certain awe on en- 
 tering the " ancient solitary reign" of these gray 
 stones, upright or prostrate, the mystery of which 
 will probably never be revealed or discovered. We 
 felt rather ashamed to run in and out among them, 
 and measure our height with them puny mortals 
 as we looked, the tallest of us! energetically to 
 clamber over the great fallen blocks, and try to 
 find out which was the identical spot upon which, 
 year after year, the human victim must have lain, 
 taking his last open-eyed gaze of the wide emerald 
 plain and blue remorseless sky. 
 
 So would romance have dreamed; but Practi- 
 cality, here predominant, soon set themselves let 
 me at once say himself- to calculate the height and 
 weight of the " old stones," and to invent a plan, by 
 means of levers and earthworks, whereby, without 
 any other machinery, even ancient Britons might 
 have erected the trilithons and the outer circle, in 
 the uprights of which he soon discovered circular 
 tenons, fitting exactly into the mortices carved in 
 the top stones, to prevent their sliding off. 
 
 " Clever fellows !" he observed, with the satisfied 
 
20 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 patronage of modern science. " Yes, those Druids 
 were very clever fellows indeed." 
 
 I hope their ghosts were gratified, if any still 
 lingered in the familiar temple, supposing it ever 
 was a temple, or that the Druids ever built it all 
 which questions, and many more, we discussed over 
 sandwiches and sherry, incensed by faint wreaths 
 of odor from a weed which modern Britain worships 
 as ancient Briton did the mistletoe, and, en passant, 
 under excuse of which probably effects quite as 
 many human sacrifices. Here, though, it was harm- 
 less enough; harmless, too, were the jokes and 
 laughter that broke the utter dead solitude of the 
 place until we dispersed to gather for ourselves or 
 for our neighbors, small mementos of Stonehenge, in 
 the shape of moss, bits of broken stone, and dainty 
 wee flowers that perked up their innocent faces 
 under the very shadow of the immemorial stones. 
 Harmless and pretty, too, was the determined perti- 
 nacity with which Hope, bringing out her eternal 
 book, caught Practicality's coat-sleeve, and insisted 
 on reading aloud to him and us the idyl Sarum 
 Plain, which endeth thus appropriately : 
 
 " By the great stones we chose our ground 
 
 For shade ; and there, in converse sweet, 
 Took luncheon. On a little mound 
 Sat the three ladies ; at their feet 
 I sat, and smelt the heathy smell " 
 
 (" There's no heath hereabouts it's all turf," ob- 
 served Practicality.) 
 
OLD STONES. 21 
 
 ' 'Pluck'd harebells " 
 
 (" Nor harebells neither. But then it might have 
 been autumn-time, 7 ' mildly remarked Charity.) 
 
 "Pluck'd harebells, turn'd the telescope 
 ^To the country round. My life went well 
 
 That hour, without the wheels of Hope ; 
 And I despised the Druid rocks 
 
 That scowl'd their chill gloom from above, 
 Like churls whose stolid wisdom mocks 
 
 The lightness of immortal love." 
 
 Immortal love ! Yes, in this place, this dumb ora- 
 cle of a forgotten world this broken, dishallowed 
 temple raised by unknown worshipers to a lost god 
 one felt the need of something immortal, some- 
 thing immutable, something which in one little word 
 expresses the best of all good things, human and 
 divine, and which in itself belongs to both. And I 
 think in heart or eyes, visible or invisible, we all 
 had it and rejoiced in it there. 
 
 And now we were going, leaving a small token 
 of affection in the shape of a paper of biscuits, and 
 a neckless though not quite wineless bottle or two, 
 for the aborigines, who had appeared from nowhere 
 in particular, to meekly maunder about the stones, 
 and offer us specimens, retiring abashed before we 
 could get out of them a syllable of conversation. 
 But just ere departing we saw, half a mile off, wind- 
 ing slowly across the Plain toward us, a mysterious 
 machine, half wheel-barrow, half peep-show, with a 
 
22 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 man behind it at least a big hat, which indicated 
 a man underneath. 
 
 My good man when you stopped, and in that 
 business-like way took out your sketch-book, plans, 
 curiosities, spread them in a sheltered nook, and be- 
 gan to lecture, in the most intelligent fashion I ever 
 heard from any cicerone, on the antiquities of Stone- 
 henge you little suspected that one of those three 
 innocent-looking ladies would ever put you in print ! 
 Not that I think you'll have the slightest objection 
 to it, Mr. Joseph Browne, of Amesbury, " twenty- 
 four years attending illustrator of Stonehenge," as 
 your guide-book says (price one shilling, and worth 
 two, for its extraordinary amount of intelligent fact 
 and even more intelligent fiction). You are a great 
 character, and long may you live to startle tourists 
 with your apparition, and enlighten them with your 
 discourse a condensed edition of your guide-book, 
 or rather your father's. Behold its title literatim ! 
 
 "THE UNPREJUDICED, AUTHENTIC, AND HIGHLY-INTERESTING 
 ACCOUNT 
 
 WHICH THAT 
 STUPENDOUS AND BEAUTIFUL EDIFICE, 
 
 STONEHENGE, 
 
 IN WILTSHIRE, 
 IS FOUND TO GIVE OF ITSELF." 
 
 Therein is proved, to the author's satisfaction at 
 least, the undoubted origin of Stonehenge. How it 
 
OLD STONES. 23 
 
 was the work of neither Komans, Celts, Druids, nor 
 Phoenicians, but of antediluvians ! How, though, as 
 the writer allows, "the difficulty in determining the 
 situation of the abodes of those antediluvians who 
 were concerned in the erection of the Serpent and 
 Temple at Abury, of Silbury Hill and of Stone- 
 henge, is very considerable," he brings a mass of 
 evidence, wanting in nothing but a few slight prem- 
 ises to start from, and proves that the giants who 
 were before the Flood could alone have erected the 
 stones, which the Flood only could have thrown 
 down. Of these antediluvians, their manners and 
 customs, and general proceedings, domestic, social, 
 and religious " of the earnest desire that existed 
 in Adam to perpetuate a knowledge of original 
 sin," which he did in all probability by the erec- 
 tion of a great serpentine temple (at Abury?) 
 "that hieroglyphic being fully adequate to so mo- 
 mentous an end" likewise of the Deluge, and the 
 course of its waters, " running, as they are known 
 to have done, from the southwest to the northeast" 
 of these and all other matters our author speaks 
 with a decision, confidence, and familiarity quite 
 enviable. 
 
 Nevertheless, despite one's smile at the ease with 
 which " facts" can be accumulated into a great cairn 
 of evidence over the merest dead dust of a theory 
 which a breath would blow away, one can not help 
 appreciating the exceeding intelligence and antiqua- 
 
24 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 rian ingenuity of both Henry Browne, senior, and 
 Joseph. Browne, junior ; and all visitors to Stone- 
 fa enge will miss a great treat if they do not invest 
 a shilling in the guide-book, and one or two more 
 shillings in the acute explanations of the guide. 
 
 We did so ; left him beaming with satisfaction and ' 
 bowing till the big hat nearly touched his knees 
 in manners, at least, our friend might have taken 
 lessons from his favorite antediluvians then we 
 rolled slowly over the smooth soft turf, often look- 
 ing behind till the great gray circle lessened and 
 lessened, and finally dropped behind one of the 
 green ridges. 
 
 " You can't see it any more." 
 
 "I wonder if we ever shall see it any more." 
 
 Charity "was afraid not;" Hope thought "she 
 should like to bring her boys here when they were 
 old enough to understand it;" Faith did what Faith 
 always does, and let the question bide. One thing, 
 however, was certain, that we should, in all human 
 probability, never be all here again as now. In 
 mortal life are renewals sometimes, very happy 
 ones, but no repetitions no "second" times. Each 
 pleasure as well as each pain stands by itself; and 
 though the new thing may be ten times better than 
 the old, still it can not be the very thing that is 
 gone forever, as is right it should go. 
 
 We knew well and in spite of our laughter I 
 think we felt that though we might all live to be 
 
OLD STONES. 25 
 
 old men and old women, and see many grand sights 
 up and down the world, we should never again have 
 a day exactly like this our day at Stonehenge. 
 
 "Well, do you want to see any more 'old 
 stones?'" 
 
 Of course we did. We had not dragged our be- 
 nevolent Practicality all that distance from his home 
 and work to let him off with any thing short of the 
 utmost we could get out of him. Besides, some of 
 us rising early had already given glowing descrip- 
 tions of what, not having been one of the beholders, 
 I dare not attempt to paint Salisbury Cathedral 
 and Close, under the aspect of seven A.M. and a 
 sunshiny morning. And some others of us had, 
 from the first dawning of the plan, set our heart 
 with a silent pertinacity, which is not often beaten 
 into any thing, on seeing all that could be seen and 
 told about the said cathedral. 
 
 So, after a few carnal but not unnecessary ar- 
 rangements at the inn with reference to lamb and 
 asparagus, we sallied forth again into Salisbury 
 street what a quaint, pretty old town it is ! and 
 passed under the heavy gateway which shuts out 
 from the world the quiet sanctities of Salisbury 
 .Close. We 
 
 "Breathed the sunny wind that rose 
 
 And blew the shadows o'er the spire, 
 And toss'd the lilac's scented plumes, 
 
 And sway'd the chestnut's thousand cones, 
 
 B 
 
26 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 And fill'd our nostrils with perfumes, 
 And shaped the clouds in waifs and zones, 
 
 And wafted down the serious strain 
 Of Sarum bells" 
 
 Not exactly yet, as it was before service time. 
 Otherwise the picture was just as we beheld it 
 that 26th of May, 1857. 
 
 Of all English Cathedrals, perhaps Salisbury most 
 merits the term "beautiful." Its exquisite light- 
 ness, whiteness, and airy grace, set in the midst of 
 a wide and open Close, sometime turf, but now one 
 golden ocean of wavy buttercups, and belted in by 
 a square walk, where chestnut and lime trees of 
 thickest foliage overhung the path, and half shad- 
 owed the old houses and small bright gardens ; its 
 glittering windows and flying buttresses, from which 
 one's gaze wandered to the most delicate of spires, 
 tapering up till it vanished into nothing in the 
 broad blue, I feel it is impossible to describe ; I can 
 only shut my eyes and dream of this first vision 
 of Salisbury Cathedral. 
 
 "We sauntered slowly along the path through the 
 field of buttercups, far better than a field of tomb- 
 stones, as it was for centuries, until bold Bishop 
 Barrington on one momentous night sent an army 
 of workmen, who before daylight had leveled the 
 whole, laying each tomb-stone carefully over its 
 proper grave, only four feet below the surface, 
 instead of upon it ! How the good people of Salis- 
 
OLD STORES. 27 
 
 bury must have stared and stormed, and been scan- 
 dalized; but the deed was done and could not be 
 undone ; the turf grew green, the dead slept quietly 
 and unharmed, and ceased to be what Providence 
 never meant them to be, though man has tried hard , 
 to make them a burden, a terror, or a destruction 
 to generations of the living. Now there ar.e no 
 more burials in Salisbury Close, and very few even 
 in the cloisters. 
 
 Passing through the nave to the Chapter-house, 
 we entered these cloisters. Others elsewhere are 
 grander Gloucester for instance but here again 
 it may be doubted whether any can compete with 
 Salisbury in beauty. This covered cloister-walk 
 encircles a space open to the sky, with (I think) 
 only two yew-trees planted in it. The verger told 
 us that the late bishop took great pride in it, and, 
 after his wife was buried there, would not allow 
 even a daisy to mar the exquisite green of the turf, 
 but paid old women to go and pick them every 
 morning. His three family tomb-stones are the 
 only tombs allowed ; over all the other graves are 
 tiny tablets let into the level grass ; and so narrow 
 is the space that each grave is required to be dug 
 coffin-shaped. Through the lately-moved turf we 
 could trace still in more than one spot this familiar 
 outline, never to be looked upon without a certain 
 awe. 
 
 We entered the Chapter-house, which is being re- 
 
28 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 stored by subscription, as a tribute to this late bish- 
 op's memory. Here again the exquisite airiness of 
 Salisbury architecture struck us. This great, lofty, 
 circular chamber chapel almost is entirely sup- 
 ported by one centre pillar, or rather cluster of 
 united pillars, from which all the arches spring. 
 You stand under it as under some slender palm- 
 tree, and look up wondering at its aerial lightness, 
 its ineffable grace. Nor even when overpowered 
 by the extreme ornamentation of the "restored" 
 building (one of us suggesting that the restorer had 
 better have left it alone was quite annihilated by 
 the verger's " Indeed! you think so, madam!") do 
 we lose this sense of the unity and simplicity which 
 constitute a perfect form of beauty. 
 
 " Rather different from Stonehenge. Quite a va- 
 riety in old stones," observed our escort, after ex- 
 amining and recognizing the Purbeck marble and 
 pavement of Minton's tiles admirable modern im- 
 itations of the antique. 
 
 Yes ; it could not fail to set us pondering how 
 
 "The One remains the many change and pass." 
 
 The OKE, whom Shelley knew not, or knew so dim- 
 ly ; whom, ignorantly and blindly, all earthly gen- 
 erations have in divers manners striven to adore, in 
 all manner of temples, from these rude stones of 
 Stonehenge, so placed that the sun rising in his 
 place upon the longest day and only then shall 
 
OLD STONES. 29 
 
 strike through the gateway on to the sacrificial 
 stone, to this fair Cathedral, upon which the de- 
 vices of man's brain and hand, through six hund- 
 red years, have been lavished, to glorify in mate- 
 rial shape the Immaterial, whose glory the whole 
 earth and heavens can not contain. 
 
 We trod lightly, as instinctively one treads on 
 " consecrated ground" consecrated not by mere 
 human episcopal benediction, but by the worship 
 of centuries ; devout, if erring sincere, though in 
 many things blind. We heard the traditions of 
 the place ; saw the usual cross-legged, broken-nosed 
 Crusaders ; the boy -bishop, who in the midst of his 
 mummeries ate himself to death poor little rogue! 
 was buried with all canonical honors, and whose 
 tiny effigy may be seen to this day ; the skeleton 
 monk, who still lives in stone, to impress beholders 
 with a wholesome terror of mortality and corrup- 
 tion. With these wonders, and a score more, we 
 regaled our curiosity, till a few living figures, quaint 
 and quiet, such as one always notices in cathedral 
 towns, entered a little door, and stole, prayer-book 
 in hand, along the nave toward the choir; while 
 over our heads far up, as it were the service-bell 
 began to toll dreamily and slow. 
 
 We had no time to stay longer, so out into the 
 open air. Passing through the door at the great 
 west front, we turned back to look at it; and, though 
 unlearned in church architecture, stood marveling 
 
SO STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 at its rich decorative work, endlessly varied, over 
 which a little bold, happy sparrow hopped up and 
 down, and in or out, as if the whole of Salisbury 
 Cathedral were made for him to build his nest in. 
 Thence we walked slowly round the Close, in one 
 corner of which a group of boys were just quitting 
 a most unecclesiastical game of cricket, and disap- 
 pearing hastily either for school or prayers. We 
 passed out through the gateway, leaving the bell 
 still ringing and the clouds still floating over the 
 airy spire the May winds still rustling the chest- 
 nut-trees and waving the buttercups, and the sun- 
 shine glorifying into almost unimaginable white- 
 ness and beauty Salisbury Cathedral. 
 
 Finally home ; in the cool of the day traveling- 
 right across country, a country purely English ; 
 skirting parks where the trees stood one by one, 
 majestic pyramids of green, with their branches 
 sweeping the very ground ; past rich fields dotted 
 with red and white cows ruminating in the grass 
 or standing knee-deep in a pond, too lazy to do 
 more than turn to us the mild, calm, sleepy gaze 
 whence Homer calls Juno "the ox-eyed ;" through 
 quiet villages, in which children and old women 
 gaped at us out of open doors, where every cottage 
 had a porch, and every porch was a mass of wood- 
 bine or China roses a drive not easily to be for- 
 gotten, from the lovely pictures it gave of one's 
 own country one's modern, everyday, living and 
 
OLD STONES. 31 
 
 breathing England, which with all her faults we 
 fondly believe to be 
 
 "Beloved of Heaven o'er all the world beside." 
 
 .Finally, as I said, home, to nnd the children 
 asleep, and sit for an hour or so at a quiet fireside, 
 talking over all our doings, which will serve for 
 talk still when we are all gray -headed, and the 
 " little ones" probably six feet high may be 
 taken I beg their pardon, may take us to see 
 Stonehenge. 
 
 "Well, have you, on the whole, enjoyed your 
 ' Old Stones?'" 
 
 I should rather think we had ! 
 
32 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 Stknte for a (Alteration. 
 
 " Of making many books there is no end." 
 
 A DICTUM has been lately reported of the great 
 rnonologuing moralist of our times, the modern Sam- 
 uel Johnson of adoring English Boswells, American 
 Goldsmiths, and aristocratic Mrs. Piozzis. And since 
 authors can not be expected to write one thing and 
 say another, the sentence may probably be found in 
 print, though, alas ! vainly could type emulate that 
 ponderous monotonous roll of long-drawn vowels 
 and harsh resolute consonants which gives to the 
 said moralist's speech even more originality than 
 his pen. "Sir," said he, "the one thing wanted in 
 this world is silence. I wish all the talkers had 
 their tongues cut out, and all the writers had their 
 pens, ink, and paper, books and manuscripts, thrown 
 into the Thames, and there were silence for a gen- 
 eration." 
 
 One not a disciple might suggest that the illus- 
 trious author had better set the example, and satir- 
 ically begin to calculate the amount of possible loss 
 to the world by such a proceeding. Nevertheless, 
 a great and wise man's most foolish sayings are like- 
 ly to contain some wisdom ; and the above sentence 
 
SILENCE FOR A GENERATION. 33 
 
 deserves consideration, as involving certainly an 
 ounce of solid truth in a bushel of eccentric ex- 
 travagance. 
 
 Silence for a generation. What a glorious state 
 of things ! No authors and no reviewers ; no ora- 
 tors, political, controversial, or polemical, and no 
 critics on oratory; no newspapers; no magazines; 
 no new novelists to be advertised up, no new poets 
 to be bowled down; travelers to wander and never 
 relate their adventures; men of science to make dis- 
 coveries, and be unable either to communicate or 
 to squabble over them ; philanthropists allowed to 
 speculate at will on the abuses of society so long as 
 they concealed their opinions ; in short, the world 
 to return to the ante-Cadmus period, and compelled, 
 in familiar but expressive phrase, "to keep itself to 
 itself, and never say nothing to nobody." 
 
 What a wondrous time ! what a lull in the 
 said world's history ! Even to dream of it sends 
 through the tired nerves and brain a sensation of 
 Elysian repose. 
 
 Silence for a generation which generation of 
 people, great or small, clever or stupid, should be 
 born unheralded, grow up unchronicled, live un- 
 criticised, and die unbiographized. It should feel 
 without discussing its feelings ; suffer without pa- 
 rading its sufferings ; admire without poetizing its 
 admiration ; condemn without printing its condem- 
 nations. Its good and ill deeds should spring up 
 B2 
 
34 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 as naturally as the flowers and weeds of a garden, 
 to be left " all a-growing and a-blowing," or quietly 
 pulled up. All this busy, gabbling, scribbling, self- 
 analyzing, self-conscious society should be laid un- 
 der a spell of hopeful dumbness forced to exist 
 simply, exempt even from the first axiom of meta- 
 physics : " I think, therefore I am." 
 
 Such a state of universal silence who would wel- 
 come ? Possibly nobody ; least of all those who 
 have really nothing to say. 
 
 What, in that case, would become of the innu- 
 merous shadowy throng who haunt every periodical ; 
 unanswered and " unread correspondents," authors, 
 of whom a luckless editor once cried out to the 
 present writer in a sort of hopeless despair, " Don't 
 say you're bringing me another manuscript ! Look 
 there ! I've got a heap of them two yards high." 
 
 And you, ye cumberers of publishers' shelves, in 
 print and out of it, inditers of novels that nobody 
 reads, poetry that nobody understands, and mental 
 miscellanea that may be briefly ticketed as " Rub- 
 bish : of no use to any body except the owner" - 
 what would be your sensations ? You too, young 
 and ardent thinkers, so exceedingly anxious to ex- 
 press your thoughts by word or pen, as if nobody 
 had expressed the like before, and the world, as you 
 honestly and devoutly believe, would be the better 
 for that expression truly, rather hard upon you 
 would fall this compulsory silence. For you can 
 
SILENCE FOR A GENERATION". 35 
 
 not yet see that, great as literature is, it is merely 
 the fitful manifestation of the world's rich inner 
 life its noblest thoughts, its most heroic deeds: 
 that this life flows on everlastingly and untiringly, 
 and would continue to flow were there no such 
 things as pens, ink, paper, and authors, types, print- 
 ers, booksellers, and publishers. 
 
 Woefully would such a crisis affect a race of 
 litterateurs far, far below these, who pursue author- 
 ship simply as a trade, without the slightest faith 
 in it or reverence for it who, happening to have 
 been born or brought up in what is termed " literary 
 circles," possess hereditarily or through long habit 
 a certain aptitude with the pen, and accordingly 
 make it a business tool with which to write any 
 thing or every thing, no matter what, so that, like 
 any other tool, it suffices to earn their daily bread. 
 What would become of these, who, like most gab- 
 blers, prate, not out of their fullness, but their emp- 
 tiness, if there were an age of silence? 
 
 There is another class as heavily to be condemn- 
 ed, and yet more pitiable the authors real au- 
 thors, not bookmakers unto whom such a law 
 would teach what they have not the moral courage 
 to teach themselves, the timely necessity of silence. 
 How many lamentable instances do we know of 
 these writers who have written themselves out, 
 yet still go on writing. 
 
 For example : a book appears ; it has merit ; it 
 
36 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 succeeds, and deserves to succeed ; its author rises 
 into note, becomes a man whom coteries seek, whom 
 the public flatters and esteems, whom publishers 
 bargain with, urge, and sue. His wares are valu- 
 able, consequently the more he produces of them 
 the better. Money follows fame, and expenses fol- 
 low money. He who wrote at first because he loved 
 it, and could not help it, now writes for a living; 
 or, if he wrote at first for a living, now writes for 
 an income the handsome income which a man of 
 talent can so willingly enjoy and so readily spend. 
 People say, "What a deal of money Mr. So-and-so 
 must make !" as possibly he does ; but they forget 
 how he makes it. Not out of so many hours per 
 diem of handwork or mechanical headwork, of in- 
 genious turning of capital, or clever adaptation of 
 other people's ingenuity. All his capital, all his 
 machinery, all his available means of work, lie in a 
 few ounces of delicate substance, the most delicate 
 in the whole human structure, wonderfully organ- 
 ized, and yet subject to every disorganization, men- 
 tal or material, that chance may furnish his brain. 
 People do not recognize this perhaps he does 
 not recognize it himself. He may be a very hon- 
 est man, deserving all his fame and all his monej^. 
 Yet both must be kept up; and how does he do it? 
 He goes on writing for a long time faithfully, care- 
 fully, and well, having respect both to the public 
 and his own credit. 
 
SILENCE FOR A GENERATION. 37 
 
 But Providence allows to every intellect only a 
 certain amount of development, limited by certain 
 laws, spiritual and physical, known or unknown, 
 yet not one of which can be broken with impunity. 
 The brain is like a rich quarry ; you may work it 
 out in a year, or you may, with care and diligence, 
 make it last a lifetime ; but you can not get out of 
 it more than is in it; and, work as you will, you 
 must get to the end of the vein some day. So does 
 our author ; but still he writes on. 
 
 He must write ; it is his trade. Gradually he be- 
 comes a mere trader traffics in sentiment, emotion, 
 philanthropy. Aware of his own best points, he re- 
 peats himself over and over again. How can he 
 help it? He must write. 'But, whether he knows 
 it or not, he has written himself out. For the rest 
 of his career, he lives on the shadow of his former 
 reputation, letting fall, perhaps, a few stray gems 
 out of that once rich store-house of his brain, or 
 else he drops at once, a burnt-out candle, an oilless 
 lamp, vanishing into such utter darkness that for a 
 long time, until perhaps posterity judges him more 
 fairly, it is almost doubted whether there was ever 
 any light in him at all. 
 
 This truth fellow-authors, is it not a truth? 
 could be illustrated by a dozen instances, living as 
 well as dead, did not charity forbid their being 
 chronicled cruelly here. 
 
 Such things, befalling not ignoble but noble 
 
38 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 minds, do indeed force us to see some sense in our 
 severe moralist's impossible ultimatum. But sure- 
 ly it is worth pausing to consider whether the evil 
 which he deplores could not be cured by less arbi- 
 trary means than an age of silence. 
 
 The time is gone by when literature was a merely 
 ornamental craft when unsuccessful authors were 
 Grub Street drudges, and successful ones some pa- 
 tron's idle hangers-on, or perhaps independent pa- 
 trons themselves. Gone by also, except in very 
 youthful and enthusiastic minds, is the imaginary 
 ideal of "an author" a demigod not to be judged 
 like other men, and entirely exempt from reproba- 
 tion, whether he attain the climax of fame, or groan 
 under the life-long wrongs of unappreciated genius. 
 
 Happily, in these days, we have very little un- 
 appreciated genius. Go round the picture exhibi- 
 tions, and depend upon it you will find a large pro- 
 portion of the really good pictures marked " sold." 
 Inquire of any magazine editor, and he will tell you 
 that he is only too thankful to get a really power- 
 ful and original article, no matter who writes it; 
 that such papers will always command their fair 
 price ; and that the sole reason of their rarely illu- 
 minating his pages is the exceeding difficulty of ob- 
 taining them. Ask any publisher of honor, credit, 
 and liberality as the majority of them are and 
 he will own that, though a bad book may be puffed 
 into factitious notoriety, and a good book remain 
 
SILENCE FOR A GENERATION. 39 
 
 temporarily unknown, give each a fair chance, and 
 both are sure to find their own level, ay, sooner 
 than the world imagines. There never was an era 
 in literature in which an author might be more sure 
 of finding the only thing an honest author would 
 desire u a fair field and no favor." 
 
 Any writer of genius, nay, even of available tal- 
 ent, will always be able, sooner or later, to earn a 
 livelihood by the pen. We repeat, meaningly, a 
 livelihood. Whether, hapless instrument! it will 
 suffice to give dinners to millionaires, and furnish 
 white gloves and velvet gowns for countesses' as- 
 semblies whether it will, in short, supply to the 
 man or woman of letters all the luxuries of the 
 merchant-prince, and all the position of ancestral 
 nobility, is quite another question a question as 
 solemn as any writer can ask himself. Alas for 
 him if neither he nor those for whom his pen is the 
 bread-winner have the moral courage to reply ! 
 
 In one sense, there is a great deal of cant sympa- 
 thy and idle enthusiasm wasted upon authors and 
 authorship. Noble as literature is, it is neverthe- 
 less no mere picturesque recreation ; it is a profes- 
 sion, a calling a trade, if you will to be pursued 
 in all love and reverence, but as steadily, honestly, 
 and rationally as any trade. You would laugh at 
 a workman who threw away his materials; you 
 would blame a merchant who rashly expended his 
 capital ; you would turn away, as from something 
 
.40 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 dishonest, from a shopkeeper who tried to foist 
 upon you goods inferior to those you expected him 
 to sell and wished to buy ; and yet all these acts, 
 under fine names, are sometimes perpetrated by 
 authors. How is it that they and their belongings 
 are so slow to recognize the meanness, the actual 
 dishonesty for it is fraud, not against the public 
 only, but against his own soul and its Maker 
 when, not for daily bread, but for " position," 
 "society, 77 " keeping up a family," and all the pegs 
 on which excuses can be hung, an author goes on 
 writing, writing, long after he has got any thing to 
 say? 
 
 For what is it that constitutes the author as dis- 
 tinguished from the rest of the world, who live, suf- 
 fer, and enjoy in a placid unconscious dumbness? 
 It is because he is the loosened tongue of all this 
 mute humanity. Because, somehow or other, he 
 knows not how or wherefore, he feels a spirit stir- 
 ring within him, teaching him to speak; and he 
 must speak. In himself he is no better often, 
 alas 1 less good than the hundreds and thousands 
 of silent ones ; yet in this he is set apart from them 
 all he is the speaker. Art, nature, with all their 
 mysteries, by others only felt, are by him under- 
 stood. It may be that into most things he sees a 
 little farther than most people, but whether or not, 
 , to the extent that he does see, has been given him 
 the power to arrange and demonstrate, which has 
 
SILENCE FOR A GENERATION. 41 
 
 not been given to them. Without any vain-glory 
 or self-exultation God knows how little there is 
 to exult over! every true author must be con- 
 scious of this fact, that by some strange peculiarity, 
 as incomprehensible to himself as to any one else, it 
 has been granted him to express what others only 
 experience that whether the sound be small or 
 loud, clear or harsh, he is the living voice of the 
 world. 
 
 Then, in God's name, let him dare not ever to 
 open his mouth unless he has something to say. 
 
 Eather, infinitely rather, let him live moderate- 
 ly, feed plainly, eschew fashionable frivolities and 
 expensive delights as he would the allurements of 
 that disguised individual whom St. Anthony's hon- 
 est tongs seized by the beautiful nose. Let him 
 turn his back upon adoring crowds who would 
 win him from his true vocation of the worker and 
 thinker to that of the mere idler. Let him write, 
 if needs must, for his daily bread an honorable 
 and lawful act; but as soon as he begins to write 
 for his mere pleasures and luxuries, or for the 
 maintenance of a certain status in the world, let 
 him pause. And as soon as he feels himself writ- 
 ing, not because he is impelled thereto, having 
 something to write about, but because publishers 
 and public expect him to write about something, 
 or, worse, because money is to be made, and writ- 
 ing a book is the only way to make it, let him stop 
 
42 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 at once and cry, " Get thee behind me, Satan. How 
 shall I dare to prostitute my gifts not for necessa- 
 ry bread and cheese, but for things which are not 
 necessary, riches, show, and notoriety ?" 
 
 Better let him live on this honest bread and 
 cheese, reducing his wants to the narrowest limit ; 
 nay, better slip from the world of letters altogether 
 into kindly obscuirty, than go on- scribble, scribble, 
 scribble flooding the public with milk-and-water 
 mediocrity, reducing the noblest calling under the 
 sun to mere journeyman's task- work, and degrading 
 himself, his subtle intellect or brilliant imagination, 
 to the condition of a spiritual suicide. For he has 
 murdered worse than his body his genius, his 
 moral faculties, his soul. 
 
 And cui bono ? 
 
 To most professional authors this question at 
 times presents itself forcibly. What is the use of 
 literature? What is the good of writing at all, 
 when the noblest of fictions, the grandest of poems, 
 or the purest and most elevating of psychological 
 disquisitions, is at best but a faint reflex of what is 
 going on in the world continually? If that same 
 world could only perceive it, its own simple and 
 natural existence in joy and grief, struggle, action, 
 and endurance, is a higher thing than all imaginary 
 representations or intellectual analyzations thereof. 
 Do we not, we authors, continually see living pic- 
 tures lovelier than any we can portray ideals 
 
SILENCE FOR A GENERATION. 43 
 
 which, if transferred literally to paper and print, 
 readers would never believe in? Do we not, cre- 
 ating our imaginary world which, the aforesaid 
 reader may happen to think pleasant and fair often 
 smile at him in secret, while of ourselves and for 
 ourselves we can not choose but sigh ? What non- 
 sense, what execrable travesty, all stage-paint, tinsel, 
 and canvas, frequently appears this fictitious arena 
 in which we make our puppets move, compared to 
 the realities around us! How small seem our got- 
 up tragedies how shallow our feigned passions 
 how paltry our imaginary pathos when we look at 
 this, God's world, filled with men and women of 
 His making ; where we meet, as we do continually, 
 scenes beyond all painting ; characters of variety 
 inexhaustible; histories that in their elements of 
 terror, pathos, heroism, tenderness, put to shame all 
 our feeble delineations. Daily do we feel that so 
 far from trying to reproduce it, we are hardly wor- 
 thy to look in the face of it, this ideal beauty, this 
 infinite perfection, which, however disguised and 
 corrupted, unseen or unrecognized, is the central 
 essence of all the wonderful world. 
 
 And sometimes we would fain it were so left and 
 not written about ; that 
 
 "Love and beauty, and delight, 
 
 . . Whose might 
 Exceeds our organs, which endure 
 No light, being themselves obscure," 
 
44 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 might rest in heavenly shadow, safe from frantic 
 poets, who vainly seek to imitate the inimitable ; 
 that vice might perish out of the perishableness of 
 her own corruption, undescribed and unexposed ; 
 that virtue were left to dwell unconscious and at 
 ease, without being startled by the sight of her own 
 lovely image very badly copied, and possibly some- 
 what out of drawing. 
 
 Ay, and oftentimes, especially of days such as 
 this on which we write, when birds are singing, and 
 green leaves budding, and all nature bursting out 
 into redundant life, innocent of authors, printers, 
 and books, do we authors long for a brief season of 
 that celestial silence to lie down and dream, with- 
 out order, arrangement, or even consciousness in 
 the dreams ; to gaze, enjoy, observe, and act, natu- 
 rally and involuntarily ; to live, and see all around 
 us living, the life of a mere flower of the field. 
 
 Even as Wordsworth, the charm of whose genius 
 is this power of making himself " one with nature," 
 recalling how 
 
 * ' I wandered lonely as a cloud 
 
 Which floats on high o'er vales and hills, 
 
 Till all at once I saw a crowd, 
 A host of golden daffodils : 
 
 Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 
 Fluttering and dancing in the breeze ; 
 
 so that ever afterward, 
 
 " In vacant or in pensive mood, 
 They flash upon the inward eye, 
 Which is the bliss of solitude." 
 
SILENCE FOR A GENERATION. 45 
 
 Wordsworth himself can find no other form in 
 which to define this exquisite sensation of mere ex- 
 istence without consciousness of existence than that 
 drawn from his flowers : 
 
 " And then my heart with pleasure fills, 
 And dances with the daffodils." 
 
 Truly, this sort of writing bids us pause in our de- 
 mand for silence. It makes us feel that there may 
 be some good in authorship ; that genius, the power 
 which by means of a few inches of black type and 
 white paper can reconvey to the human mind all its 
 passions, emotions, and aspirations can retranslate 
 to it the whole beautiful and immortal life of the 
 universe this genius must be a wondrous gift a 
 divine possession. Let those who have it hold it 
 intact, un alienated, unsquandered, undefiled. 
 
 And for those who have it not there is little to 
 repine. They possess most of its benefits, safe from 
 its dangers and tribulations. Any man who can 
 enjoy a fine poem, feel his heart strengthened by a 
 good novel, and his spirit refreshed by a few pages 
 of wholesome waiting, rich in that true humor which 
 is such a lightener of the heavy burdens of life, is 
 as great and happy as the author, if he only knew 
 it. Let him rejoice and be thankful ; he also has 
 been in Arcadia. 
 
 For the rest, sorry pretenders to literature, vain 
 chattering pies who really have no song to sing, and 
 
46 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 only desire to hear the clatter of their own sweet 
 voices, let them be. No need to have their small 
 tongues cut out, or their luckless manuscripts tied 
 up in a bundle and flung into the Thames or any 
 other river. A few years will end all their clamor 
 in an unbroken and eternal silence ; and their works, 
 designed to float down the stream of time, will soon 
 sink to the bottom by their own ponderosity, and 
 afflict its waters no more, Requiescant in pace ! All 
 things find their own level very soon. The world 
 will do extremely well even without silence for a 
 generation. 
 
GOING OUT TO PLAY. 47 
 
 ohig out to |Jlag. 
 
 WHO that has lived to middle age, when to work 
 has become the principal object of existence, does 
 not look back with an amused interest, a half-mel- 
 ancholy wonder, on that season when " going out 
 to play" was an acknowledged daily necessity; 
 when we sallied forth with no pretense of duty or 
 labor, neither to walk, nor ride, nor pay visits, nor 
 do errands ; bent on no definite scheme of action 
 going out simply and absolutely "to play?" And 
 those Saturday afternoons those glorious whole 
 holidays those delicious accidental half hours, 
 form the largest feature in our recollections now. 
 
 Going out to play ! It seems ludicrous to fancy 
 ourselves ever doing such a thing we, who have 
 to tramp in and out of town on our daily business, 
 and do it; or feel we are bound to pay a visit, and 
 pay it; that it is our duty to take a constitutional 
 walk, and we take it; to plan a pleasure excursion, 
 and we solemnly go through with it. But as for 
 turning out of doors for a given space of time, to 
 go nowhere and do nothing particular, what a ri- 
 diculous idea it has become ! Only by a strong ef- 
 fort of mental transposition and retrogradation can 
 
48 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 we sympathize with a certain dear little soul of my 
 acquaintance, who, after being sedulously petted and 
 entertained for a whole week by a houseful of be- 
 nevolent grown-up people, said pathetically, 
 
 " Me want to go out and play ! Me want a 'ittle 
 girl to play with me ! Me shouldn't care if she was 
 a 'ittle girl in rags !" 
 
 In this play companionship is the great matter 
 companionship based on quite different grounds 
 from that of later life. Except a few, endowed with 
 that passionate adhesiveness which is sure to prove 
 in after-life at once their blessing and their torment, 
 children are seldom either unselfish or devoted in 
 their attachments. Most of their loves are mere 
 likings, contracted for the pleasure of the moment. 
 Their 'dear little free hearts need neither a friend 
 nor a lover; they only want " somebody to play 
 with." Any body will do even the " 'ittle girl 
 in rags." Those who have experienced that pre- 
 mature clouding of life's golden morning a soli- 
 tary childhood, may remember the wistful longing 
 with which they have stood watching groups of 
 dirty, happy little rogues collected at street-corners 
 and on village-greens, and how sorely they have 
 rebelled at the prohibitions which made it impossi- 
 ble to join them. Easy age ! when there is no pa- 
 trician exclusiveness, and little of the eclecticism of 
 personal tastes or affections; when the chief thing 
 wanted is society companionship. 
 
GOING OUT TO PLAY. 49 
 
 But, as if in compensation for this, the tie, so slight 
 then, becomes afterward so tightly riveted that there 
 are few pleasures purer or more exquisite than that 
 taken by old playmates, or children of one family, 
 in talking over every trivial thing belonging to their 
 contemporary childhood; and the same tacit free- 
 masonry which makes most people hear patiently 
 any sort of love-story, makes every body listen with 
 a vague interest to the chronicle of every body else's 
 childhood; for both themes form two out of the three 
 universal facts of human life birth, love, and death. 
 
 Therefore it may amuse some, if, prior to saying 
 a few serious words on the subject of play, I gossip 
 a little as we did the other night over our fire I 
 and the only one now left to gossip together over 
 our childhood. We did so, apropos of the notion 
 already started, that childhood is the only time 
 when it was necessary business this going out to 
 play. 
 
 We were not city children, thank goodness! We 
 never had to be muffled as to the bodies, denuded 
 as to the legs, our heads weighed down by beauti- 
 ful hats and feathers, our feet compressed into the 
 nattiest of boots, and sent out walking, solemnly and 
 genteelly, through streets and squares. I am proud 
 to say ours was a very different costume. It con- 
 sisted of a pinafore of common blue print, made aft- 
 er the pattern of a French blouse, put on over all 
 our other clothes, fastened at the waist by a leather 
 C 
 
50 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 belt, and reaching nearly to the ankles; which, in 
 boys and girls alike, were defended by stout shoes, 
 merino stockings, and those substantial under-vest- 
 ments which we were then not ashamed to call 
 "trowsers." Some light head-gear, cloth cap or 
 straw hat, was the only addition necessary to the 
 universal all-covering bine pinafore. 
 
 O sacred blue pinafore! so warm, light, and 
 comfortable put off or on in a minute allowing 
 full liberty to run, jump, climb, scramble, or crawl, 
 creating a sublime indifference to dirt or tears 
 that is, fractures I have never seen any modern 
 garment appropriated to children r s wear which 
 could at all be compared to this costume of my 
 youth. 
 
 In it attired we went out to play. Our play- 
 place was the garden, the green, and the great field 
 before the terrace where we lived : there was a ta- 
 booed region beyond, consisting of the parade and 
 the public walks, where we were not allowed to go 
 in our blue pinafores ; but within the 'above limits 
 nobody and nothing interfered with us. On the 
 green, ball-practice not bullets against a gable- 
 end, tip-cap, trap-bat, prisoners' base, cricket, mar- 
 bles, were carried on ; likewise digging of holes and 
 making of bonfires. The garden had its restric- 
 tions, especially at the season of growing vegeta- 
 bles, though I remember a rhubarb-bed which mys- 
 teriously withered in consequence of a secret exca- 
 
GOING OUT TO PLAY! 51 
 
 vation being made under it; and an ash-tree, which, 
 being built into the chimney of a hut, where there 
 was a fire and a good deal of gunpowder used, was 
 by next spring sensibly affected in its robustness 
 of constitution indeed, I believe it ever afterward 
 declined to put out a single leaf. 
 
 But these things were trifles ; so also were a few 
 prohibitions concerning the field, when it happened 
 to be knee-deep in mud or snow, or filled with three 
 hundred head of cattle which periodically visited it; 
 for the poor burgesses of that place have enjoyed 
 from time immemorial the right of successive pas- 
 turage in the three or four I forget how many 
 large town-fields. 
 
 When they came to ours, what a jubilee it was! 
 To be wakened by a distant murmur of lowing, 
 neighing, shouting, trampling ; to dart to the win- 
 dow, and see with sleepy eyes, in the gray dawn, 
 our field covered, not with daisies and buttercups 
 these floral delights must be sacrificed forthwith 
 but with a moving multitude, equine, bovine, as- 
 inine, and gradually with countless milk-maids and 
 milking-men, carrying their pails or sitting peace- 
 fully leaning against well-behaved cows. 
 
 After then, no want of a place to play in. We 
 used to get dressed by six A.M., leap the ditch- 
 bank, mug in hand, to have it filled direct from the 
 cow not any cow, but our own particular animal ; 
 for we chose favorites, whose proceedings we watch- 
 
52 STUDIES FEOM LIFE, 
 
 ed, and to whom we gave names Daisy, Brownie, 
 Cowslip, and the like and over whom we were ex- 
 ceedingly jealous. Woe be to the individual who 
 presumed to go for a pennyworth of milk to any 
 body else's cow! or, still worse, who dared insult 
 any but his or her own lawful cows with what we 
 were particularly fond of doing namely, stirring 
 them up, and squatting down on the circle of warm- 
 ed and perfumy grass where they had been lying 
 all night. 
 
 The other animals we patronized little, though 
 occasionally it was fun to run after an infant don- 
 key, or come stealthily behind some drowsy old 
 mare, and twitch a hair or two, invaluable for fish- 
 ing purposes, out of her long tail. Strange to say, I 
 do not remember our ever coming to harm, though, 
 with the mixed cautiousness arid fearlessness of 
 country-bred children, we used to roam among 
 these beasts all day over as long as they staid. 
 And we were inconsolable for at least an hour 
 when, starting up as usual to give a morning glance 
 at our favorites, we would find the well-cropped 
 field all brown, bare, and desolate the cattle were 
 gone! 
 
 Once, and only once, the great field was made 
 into hay. The novelty of the thing the beauty 
 of acres upon acres of waving, flowery grass, the 
 exquisite perfume when it was down, and the ex- 
 citement during the whole of hay-time lasting a 
 
GOING OUT TO PLAY. 53 
 
 good while, for I remember one end of the field was 
 green again before the other was mown makes 
 that summer one of the most vivid points in our 
 juvenile history. Its daily joys, being holiday joys, 
 were only bounded by the terrible necessity of hav- 
 ing to go to bed. 
 
 Even now a recollective pang affects me as I 
 think how dreadful it was to be "fetched in" on 
 those lovely summer nights ; how we envied those 
 "poor" children on the green, who, probably hav- 
 ing no particular bed to go to, were never sent to 
 bed at all ; how intolerable was the tyranny of be- 
 ing carried off up stairs, undressed in broad day- 
 light, and expected to go to sleep which expect- 
 ation (I must confess) was generally fulfilled in five 
 minutes. Nevertheless, we rebelled against the 
 principle of the proceeding, and kept up for years 
 a fondly cherished dream of contriving to play out 
 of doors all night long, and never go to bed at all. 
 
 And once with this intent we laid a well-arranged 
 plot, which, for the moral safety of any young read- 
 er, I beg to state, proves that, like most children, we 
 were extremely naughty at times. 
 
 We thought, if we could only lie quiet and keep 
 broad awake till all the household were asleep, we 
 might steal down stairs, grope through the kitchen, 
 unbolt the back door, and so away out to play 
 when there was nobody about but ourselves out 
 under the stars, or obeying that summons, which, 
 
64 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 to my mind, still conjures up a dream of unattained 
 bliss, which haunted at least a dozen years of my 
 childhood 
 
 "The moon doth shine as bright as day; 
 Boys and girls, come out to play : 
 Come with a rattle, and come with a call; 
 Come with a good will, or come not at all." 
 
 For the furtherance of this plan, we determined 
 to go to bed in our clothes. How we managed it I 
 now forget whether we generously came in with- 
 out being "fetched," and volunteered to put our- 
 selves to bed, or tried some other ruse calculated to 
 throw dust into eyes that were aching with many 
 cares never understood till little boys and girls grow 
 up to be fathers and mothers but we certainly did 
 manage it. To prevent discovery, we put on, out- 
 side all our day clothes, our innocent-looking night- 
 gowns, and lay down to sleep as quiet as mice and 
 as good as gold. 
 
 But fate was against us, as against most conspir- 
 ators. Maternal surveillance missing the afore- 
 said clothes, including the boys' boots, which were 
 safe on their feet, also a little surprised at our all 
 appearing so very fat in bed proceeded to investi- 
 gate. Alas ! we were ignominiously discovered, 
 and made to undress and go to bed properly like 
 good children. And though, since then, we have 
 each and all of us kept many a night-watch, sleep- 
 ing roofless under foreign stars, or seeing the En- 
 
GOING OUT TO PLAY. 55 
 
 glish dawn break mournfully from sick-room win- 
 dows, never, never have we been among the num- 
 ber of those fortunate little boys and girls who carne 
 out to play when the moon did "shine as bright as 
 day.' 7 
 
 But once, on a birthday, we obtained permission 
 to rise early enough to go out and play by starlight. 
 Well do I remember the look of that chilly Novem- 
 ber morning, the brightness of the stars, the intense 
 blackness of the trees, the solitude of the terrace and 
 the road ; how hard we tried to persuade ourselves 
 that it was very pleasant, and that we enjoyed every 
 thing very much. Our chief proceeding, in defi- 
 ance of numb fingers and tingling toes, was to gather 
 laurel in order to make a crown for the hero of the 
 day, who, protesting it was "cold" and "spidery," 
 declined putting it on his head, and suggested plac- 
 ing it on the top of the pump. There for weeks we 
 watched it dangle watched it dolefully from be- 
 hind nursery windows, where, shut up with whoop- 
 ing-cough, we spent the rest of the winter ; but still 
 protesting as even yet we protest (all save one, 
 whose birthday now passes by, outwardly unkept, 
 and whose fair-haired head has long since been laid 
 down in peace, without any laurel-crown) that we 
 would not, on any account, have missed that "going 
 out to play" under the November stars. 
 
 Our play was sometimes exceedingly hard work. 
 I laugh now to call to mind the extraordinary cle- 
 
56 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 light there used to be in digging a hole ; not for 
 any purpose or after any design, but simply digging 
 a hole. We would be at it for entire days with a 
 perseverance worthy of Cornish miners or Austra- 
 lian gold-hunters. If our labor had any aim at all, 
 it was that of digging till we came to water, which 
 not unfrequently happened, and then our hole be- 
 came a pond. Once, after hearing of the central 
 fire, we started the idea of digging down in search 
 of it, and burrowed several feet deep, when, finding 
 the earth no warmer, we gave up our project. We 
 never made any particular use of our holes except 
 to sit in them occasionally, enthroned on brick-ends 
 and pieces of stone from the neighboring quarry, ex- 
 ceedingly proud and happy, though slightly damp 
 and uncomfortable. 
 
 But toward the 5th of November, the great epoch 
 in our year, we ceased to dig and began to build. 
 Our architecture was at first very simple, consisting 
 merely of a few bricks, so placed as to keep off the 
 wind from our bonfire. From that we planned 
 seats round it, where we might watch our potatoes 
 roast and light our crackers at ease. Then, after 
 reading Cooper's novels, and George Lillie Craik's 
 New ZealanderSj a book which was long our prime 
 delight, we conceived the bold idea of erecting a 
 sort of wigwam. Several were attempted and fail- 
 ed ; the last, which lingers in most vivid recollec- 
 tion, is that one, before mentioned, of which the 
 chimney was formed by the ill-fated mountain ash. 
 
GOING OUT TO PLAY. 57 
 
 Aladdin's palace was nothing to this wonder of 
 architecture. Its site was in a triangular corner 
 where two walls joined; its other walls were built 
 of quarry-stones and earth. Its roof had proper 
 beams old pea-sticks, or, as we called them, "pea- 
 rice" an( j W as slated over with thin stones. There 
 was a chimney, with two seats in the chimney- 
 corner, quite proper and domestic, save that in these 
 seats or any other you never could get farther than 
 eighteen inches from the fire, and that the smoke 
 obstinately persisted in going out any where except 
 by the chimney. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was a magnificent house, imper- 
 vious to wind and rain exqept on very bad days. 
 In it we spent our holiday afternoons for many 
 weeks, being obliged to rush out at intervals to 
 clear our eyes, mouths, and noses from the smoke, 
 and to cool ourselves after being nearly as well 
 roasted as our own potatoes : still, I repeat, it was a 
 magnificent dwelling. It finally, like all earthly 
 mansions, fell into decay ; the last thing I remem- 
 ber of it being that one of our boys, executing a 
 hornpipe on the roof in order to dance it down, 
 saw, to his horror, emerging from the procumbent 
 ruins a school-fellow, who had been sitting by the 
 hearth, and now shook himself composedly, put on 
 his cap, and walked away, perfectly safe and sound. 
 Truly children, like cats, have nine lives. 
 
 These were winter pleasures. In those days, 
 C 2 
 
58 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 what a grand event was the first frost, which I 
 have known come as early as the 9th of Novem- 
 ber " mayor-choosing-day," or " clouting-out-day" 
 which, by an old town custom, was the very sat- 
 urnalia of play. All the children in every school 
 or private house were " clouted out" by a body of 
 young revolutionists, armed with "clouts" knotted 
 ropes with which they battered at school-doors 
 till the delighted prisoners were set free. Woe be 
 to the master or mistress who refused the holiday, 
 for there would not have been a whole pane left in 
 the school-room windows ; and I doubt if even his 
 worship, the new mayor, would have dared to fly 
 in the face of public opinion by punishing any 
 " clouter-out." 
 
 Our next era was "when the canal bore" which 
 meant, when that famous piece of water, our Thames, 
 our Rhine, our Loch Lomond, our Lake Superior, 
 was hard enough for skating; when we could actu- 
 ally walk on foot across those depths, sacred to boat- 
 sailing and fishing, and kick our heels against the 
 clumps of frozen water-grass, which had wrecked 
 many a bold ship (constructed out of a bit of hard 
 deal, and three long brimstone matches it was be- 
 fore the age of lucifers), and harbored many a gud- 
 geon, swimming away with our unfortunate hook 
 in his mouth sorely lamented by us, but not, I 
 fear, on account of the gudgeon. 
 
 Well knew we every inch along the canal banks 
 
GOING OUT TO PLAY. 59 
 
 up to the big stones, where the skaters used to 
 sit tying on their skates, and the timid lookers-on 
 stand watching the two beautiful slides that were 
 always made right across the canal basin. We had 
 never heard then of Webster, R. A. ; but his famous 
 "Slide' 7 in the Art-Treasures Exhibition brought 
 back to me, as it must have done to thousands more, 
 those glorious frosts of old, when we were out at 
 play from daylight till dusk, as merry as crickets 
 and as warm as " toasts" barring our noses, toes, 
 and finger-ends ; running in at noon for a scrap of 
 dinner, which we gobbled up as fast as possible 
 bless us ! we had the digestion of young ostriches ; 
 and were off again instanter. For who could tell ? 
 it might be a thaw to-morrow. 
 
 In one thaw after a long frost, we, in the ab- 
 sence of lawful authority, performed a feat which 
 under no other circumstances could have happened, 
 and which, in its daring originality, still gives us a 
 degree of naughty satisfaction. We discovered that 
 the canal opposite a coal-wharf had been broken up 
 by boats into large blocks of ice, which still went 
 floating about. One of us, who had unluckily been 
 presented with a volume of Arctic Voyages, em- 
 barked on the nearest of these icebergs, and went 
 floating about, guiding his course by the aid of a 
 long pole. Of course, there were soon half a dozen 
 more imitating him. Oh the delight of that sail, in 
 its total ignoring of danger, its indifference to ship- 
 
60 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 wreck, and cool enjoyment of submersion ! One of 
 the voyagers still tells with pride that he "got in" 
 up to the neck three times that afternoon, the only 
 termination of which was his being obliged to go 
 to bed, because the whole of his available wardrobe 
 was hanging to dry by the kitchen fire. 
 
 Nothing worse happened, much as it might have 
 been deserved. And if that handful of foolhardy 
 lads one or two of whom, chancing to read this, 
 may call to mind that very afternoon's play could 
 be gathered together now, out of India, China, Aus- 
 tralia, from happy paternal English homes, and quiet 
 graves, where the solitary name, left behind to nei- 
 ther wife nor child, moulders away upon the forgot- 
 ten headstone, happy they if they could plead guilty 
 to no freak more perilous, no delirium of pleasure 
 more fatal than the sailing on those icebergs across 
 our old canal. 
 
 But, reflecting on these facts of our childhood 
 though we were brought up with at least as much 
 care as falls to the lot of middle-class children gen- 
 erally recalling our daily risks of life and limb, and 
 moral contamination though this latter was small 
 peril, as it is to all who have the safeguard of a good 
 and innocent home, and yet remembering what a 
 boundless enjoyment, what a vital necessity was to 
 us this going out to play, we can not but ponder 
 deeply on the lot of those other children whom we 
 to envy for being allowed to play any where 
 
GOING OUT TO PLAY. 61 
 
 and any how, without being called in to the inter- 
 ruption of meals or the ignominy of bed. " Poor" 
 children as, with genteel accentuation of the ad- 
 jective, Dickens's Miss Mm/fathers terms them we 
 have come to think differently of them now. Not 
 exactly for their poverty hunger is sauce to any 
 fare short of no fare at all, and dirt makes a capital 
 substitute for clothes. Except in the very depth of 
 destitution, it is rarely the children who suffer most, 
 at least consciously. Nevertheless, we view them 
 with a full heart. We wonder how, in cities espe- 
 cially, they ever manage to arrive at maturity ; or, 
 so surviving, and blessed with their due share of 
 limbs and bodily faculties, we marvel that they do 
 not all turn out thieves, rogues, sluts or worse. 
 
 Dangers infinite all children must meet : it is an 
 old saying, half true and half profane, that Provi- 
 dence guards the child and the drunkard ; but in 
 the former case Providence guards by strictly nat- 
 ural means, namely, the exceeding elasticity of 
 frame, tenacity of life, and power of eradicating evil 
 by perpetually renewed growth, which belongs to 
 all young animals. There is no need to double the 
 risks, as they are doubled and trebled to poor peo- 
 ple's children that class upon which society de- 
 pends mainly for health, labor, and industry. Any 
 person of common sense, during an hour's walk 
 along the streets of London or any large town, will 
 have sufficient evidence on this subject. 
 
62 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 Now it seems pretty well agreed upon by modern 
 philanthropists that if we are to mend the world at 
 all, it must be through the new generation, for the 
 old, alas ! is almost hopeless -of improvement. Be- 
 sides, in the balance of advantages, it is wiser to 
 expend labor over a young tree than on one which, 
 toil as you will, you can seldom straighten out of 
 the crookedness of years, or graft with pleasant fruit 
 upon a stem which has long borne sour. Still, we 
 are bound to "dig about it and dung it," as the good 
 Master allows ; but let us not, for its sake, neglect 
 the growing trees which spring up around us on 
 every side. There is more hope in ragged, indus- 
 trial, national, or even infant schools in teaching 
 establishments of every sort and kind, religions or 
 secular than in all our prisons, work-houses, re- 
 formatories, and penitentiaries. 
 
 The great want in this admirable movement for 
 the benefit of the young is its being almost exclu- 
 sively on the mental improvement system. How- 
 ever varied be the instruction, and the mode in 
 which it is imparted, the chorus of it is always 
 " Teach teach teach." 
 
 Now children do not need teaching every day 
 and all day long, any more than a tree requires 
 perpetual watering, pruning, propping, and manur- 
 ing. Set it in the ground, and let it grow : it will 
 grow in spite of you; and the best and wisest thing 
 you can do is to watch it that it grows straightly 
 
GOING OUT TO PLAY. 63 
 
 and safely, defending it from all noxious influences, 
 but leaving it, in its early season of development, 
 to the dews, and sunshine, and fresh air, and med- 
 dling with it as little as possible. 
 
 As important as any learning, often more so for 
 education can be gained in very mature life is to 
 children that indispensable blessing, play y safe, well- 
 watched, and properly restricted, but freely allowed 
 and daily play; not doled out in ten-minute portions 
 between hours of lessons, or according to Miss Man- 
 flathers' creed for " poor" children 
 
 "In work, work, work. In work alway 
 Let their first years be passed " 
 
 but granted as an indispensable and very large item 
 in their sum of existence. Poor little souls why 
 not ? childhood lasts but a dozen years or so, at best. 
 As says Christophero Sly, 
 
 "Let the world wag, we shall ne'er be younger." 
 
 Perhaps even well-to-do parents scarcely think 
 enough of this great necessity of play for their lit- 
 tle ones, boys and girls both, up to as long a period 
 as possible, which will be short enough time with 
 most. Alas! well do I myself remember the last 
 evening that ever I put on my blue pinafore and 
 " went out to play." However, of these respecta- 
 ble fathers and mothers I am not now speaking, 
 but of the fathers and mothers- not less tender and 
 scrupulous often of working-people's children. 
 
6-i STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 Schools are excellent things; yet when a child is 
 turned out of school to a home which probably con- 
 sists of only a single room or two rooms which la- 
 bor and sickness, drunkenness or want, make worse 
 than 110 home at all where does he go to? To 
 play, of course ; but where ? In filthy alleys, mak- 
 ing mud pies swimming boats along open sewers 
 busy at hop-scotch on pavements, or pitch-and- 
 toss at street-corners darting under horses 7 heads 
 and carriage-wheels exposed all day to the police- 
 man's collaring, the errand-boy's "whopping," and 
 half the night to the foul-mouthed " rows" which 
 take place at gin-palace doors open, in short, to 
 every sort and kind of bodily harm and mental cor- 
 ruption. 
 
 You, fond and gentle lady-mother, who send your 
 children out for a walk, or into the safe garden, un- 
 der the guardianship of two nursery-maids, on wet 
 days have them for a game in the dining-room, and 
 at eight o'clock every night go up to kiss them 
 in their little beds, only fancy your boys and girls 
 turned out for one single day of such a life as 
 this! 
 
 Can any thing be done to remedy it any thing 
 which, without detracting a jot from the usefulness 
 of schools, will provide for a want which no schools 
 can supply ? 
 
 A society lately started has tried to answer this 
 question. It is called " The Play-ground Society," 
 
GOING OUT TO PLAY. 65 
 
 and its object is " to provide play-grounds for poor 
 children in populous places." Its originator, a be- 
 nevolent London clergyman, thus states how the 
 scheme arose. The paragraph is taken from a pri- 
 vate letter, which for public good there can be no 
 objection to make public: 
 
 " The immediate impulse to our society came 
 from a little street in my late district, wherein I 
 found a woman ' blowing up 7 some little boys well 
 for making a noise before her house. I entered 
 into a conversation with her upon my wish to have 
 a play-ground set apart for poor children who had 
 no room to play at home, and must play somewhere. 
 She replied * that the idea was a good one, because 
 then they would not trouble her. 1 Feeling, there- 
 fore, that all classes were to benefit by the move- 
 ment, I began to look up friends to the cause, and 
 a good many were found. We hope to be more 
 useful by assisting in the conveyance of sites than 
 by their purchase. We do not propose to do more 
 than procure the play-ground, leaving the manage- 
 ment to local authorities." 
 
 Therefore the brief prospectus urges " support 
 from the nobility and gentry with reference to the 
 towns and cities contiguous to their estates," and 
 earnestly invites such to make "grants of land 
 which can be legally conveyed for that purpose." 
 We feel that we are perhaps affording one chance 
 more to a substantial public good in giving the ad- 
 
66 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 dress of this society u 17 Bull and Mouth Street, 
 St. Martin's-le-Gran.d, London."* 
 
 Thus, with a plea for play-grounds and for play, 
 we end these reminiscences of our play-days, now 
 gone by forevermore. Yet blessed are those fam- , 
 ilies, however dwindled and separated, who are 
 bound together in heart by remembrances such as 
 these ! and blessed is the memory of those parents, 
 just, patient, forbearing, and tender, who, however 
 tried (how sorely none find out until taught by par- 
 enthood themselves), have, in spite of all afflictions 
 of their own, given to their offspring that blessing, 
 which nothing afterward can take away, and the 
 want of which nothing can ever supply, the recol- 
 lection of a happy childhood. 
 
 * It is scarcely needful to say that this was a magazine article 
 written for a particular purpose. But the author, feeling strongly 
 on the subject, prefers leaving it exactly as it stands. 
 
WANT SOMETHING TO BEAD. 67 
 
 11 tUant gometljutg to Bmtr." 
 
 NEXT to " going out to play," there is nothing so 
 important to many children most children, I may 
 say as having something to read. After a certain 
 age, and the attainment of a certain amount of 
 scholarship, almost every child begins to " read to 
 itself" possibly not omnivorously sometimes to 
 a very small extent. But a child who does not 
 read at all, and does not like any sort of reading, 
 is almost an anomaly nowadays, at least among 
 what we proudly term " the educated classes." 
 
 It is curious to trace the rise, progress, and de- 
 velopment of this branch of education, informal and 
 unconscious, yet which, more than any others, in- 
 fluences the mind, character, and disposition of a 
 growing-up child. I speak not of prodigies or pre- 
 cocious geniuses, but of ordinary boys and girls, just 
 waking up to think about not themselves they 
 rarely trouble their little heads with self-contempla- 
 tion, and it is a very bad sign if they do but the 
 wonderful world they have come into, about which 
 their chief sentiment is an insatiable curiosity. 
 
 No one can spend half a day in the company of 
 a moderately intelligent child, if only arrived at the 
 
68 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 age of " What's dat?" " What zu doin'?" without 
 remarking how extraordinary a peculiarity of the 
 infant mind is this same curiosity. Our grand- 
 mothers tried to repress it; and " Little people 
 should not want to know every thing" "Little 
 people should learn not to ask questions" were 
 acknowledged axioms of old-fashioned education ; 
 but we are wiser now. To the contemplative mind 
 there is something solemn, almost awful, in this ar- 
 dent desire to know, beginning with the six-months- 
 old babe who stretches uncertain fingers to its moth- 
 er's bright neck-ribbon, or screams because it is not 
 allowed to catch hold of the flame of the candle. 
 
 I have often thought it might be useful if people 
 would take the trouble to recall and jot down their 
 own experiences of this craving after information 
 this unquenchable- thirst to find out the why and be- 
 cause of things, which is only allayed by asking in- 
 cessant questions or by reading books. And, just 
 as one experience out of many, which, by rousing 
 thoughtful elders to reflect on their own youth, may 
 help them to deal more wisely with that mysterious 
 piece of God's handiwork, as yet unspoiled by man 
 --a child I shall here set down a few recollections 
 about our reading and our books when we were chil- 
 dren. 
 
 In those days, juvenile literature was very differ- 
 ent from what it is now; there were no children's 
 publishers, making it their specialty to furnish the 
 
WANT SOMETHING TO BEAD. 69 
 
 ravenous youthful maw with the best species of ali- 
 ment, employing excellent authors to chronicle Dr. 
 Birch and his Young Friends, Grandmamma's Pock- 
 ets, and Good-natured Bears; and illustrating Cin- 
 derella and the White Cat with almost as good art 
 as then adorned the walls of the Eoj^al Academy. 
 Even the cheap periodicals now littering about ev- 
 ery house, and to be picked up by every child on 
 every parlor table, had not then begun their ca- 
 reer. No Illustrated Neius no Punch no House- 
 hold Words only a few antique magazines, or an ac- 
 cidental magazine, chiefly provincial for we were 
 provincial children reached our eager hands. And 
 even this species of fugitive literature was very lim- 
 ited ; for we were not rich, we had no large domes- 
 tic library, nor did we live in a reading community, 
 I only remember three houses where it was delicious 
 to go to tea, because you were sure of getting a 
 book to read. But this is forestalling. 
 
 Does any one call to mind his or her first book ? 
 The very first time when, arriving a step above 
 c, a, t, cat, and d, o, g, dog, some strange volume, 
 not the spelling-book, was taken in hand and blun- 
 dered over, sticking at all the hard words, which 
 were either puzzled out or skipped altogether, as 
 character or talents impelled? But, once fairly em- 
 barked on the undertaking, what a wonderful thing 
 it was! A book something interesting some- 
 thing which out of its tame black and white pages 
 
70 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 could afford us an enjoyment, intangible certainly, 
 involving nothing to eat, or drink, or play with, yet 
 an enjoyment exquisitely real, substantial, and sat- 
 isfying, such as nothing had ever been before. 
 
 Of my first book I have the strongest impression 
 still. It was The Robins, by Mrs. Trimmer, I fan- 
 cy, but am not sure, never having beheld it since 
 the age of six. It was lent me by a playmate of 
 seven, and, accompanied by the gift of a little black 
 top. The top I cherished whipped affectionately 
 for years and have it somewhere still, in memory 
 of a warm heart that death only ever made cold. 
 But the book I altogether slighted, until, casually 
 opening it one day, I found, with some surprise, 
 that I could read. 
 
 It was for the edification of those who know it 
 not the summer's history of a pair of robin-red- 
 breasts, taken from the robin side in fact, what 
 I may call the bird's-eye view of the subject. It 
 described all their domestic proceedings, from the 
 building of the nest in the ivy wall to the success- 
 ive appearance equaling in importance the ar- 
 rival of "our baby" of four young birds, Eobin, 
 Dicky, Flapsy, and Pecksy. As I write down their 
 names, how the idea of them comes back, each as 
 strongly individualized as any featherless bipeds I 
 ever knew. Eobin, the eldest, a brave, generous, 
 harum-scarum bird, who, determining not to be 
 taught, but to teach himself to fly, came to grief 
 
WANT SOMETHING TO REAP. 71 
 
 and a broken wing, was unable to return to the 
 nest, and had to subsist for the rest of the summer 
 under a dock-leaf a " shocking example" fondly 
 tended by his amiable sister Pecksy ; Dicky and 
 Flapsy far less interesting characters who were 
 always allied in both mischief and pleasure, never 
 did any thing either naughty or good ; and the two 
 elderly birds, exceedingly moral and parental, who 
 nevertheless, to my surprise, contentedly turned the 
 young ones adrift, left the nest, and subsisted for the 
 winter on the crumbs of the family who owned the 
 garden. 
 
 This family, portrayed in the frontispiece with 
 enormously big faces, head et prceterea nihil, look- 
 ing in at the nest, were quite secondary characters 
 in the story. The bird-life was all in all. Such a 
 glorious sense it gave of the delight of living un- 
 der ivy-leaves, and being fed with a worm on a 
 bright summer morning; of learning to fly, and 
 then wandering at ease from tree to tree, receiving 
 occasional moral lessons about guns, traps, and the 
 duty of not robbing overmuch the protecting fam- 
 ily. . Memory may have exaggerated and put much 
 in the book that was not there, but the general im- 
 pression is ineffaceable. Even now, when every 
 morning I meet that graceful, gentlemanly old rob- 
 in, who looks at me for a moment with his shy, 
 bright eye, and then hops away under a goose- 
 berry-bush, I often think, "My little friend, can 
 
72 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 you be any descendant of those familiar compan- 
 ions of mine, far back in distant ages, who lived 
 in paper and printer's ink, common sense would 
 say, but to me it seems as if they had abode, and 
 still abide, through a summer that never ends, in a 
 real garden, in a real nest under an ivy wall?" 
 
 The Robins must have been our very first era in 
 literature. Our next was Sinbad the Sailor, Robin- 
 son Crusoe, and Jack tlie Giant-killer : not elegantly 
 got up, but coarsely printed, in paper covers, with 
 "cuts" instead of " plates." Extraordinary cuts 
 some of them were, as, seeing one of the same edi- 
 tions lately, I found out. Vividly it recalled all 
 the rest: Crusoe seeing the footprints in the sand, 
 Crusoe and his man Friday ; Sinbad carried up by 
 the roc, Sinbad put into the open coffin and let down 
 into the funereal cave ; also Jack, sitting genteelly 
 at table with the ugliest of giants, who it was half 
 feared might "frighten" us; but, bless you! we 
 were never frightened at any thing of that sort. 
 We had no nursemaid to tell us horrible tales of 
 "Bogie" and the "Black Man;" all we ever heard 
 or learned for the early years of our lives came di- 
 rect from the fountain-head the fountain of all 
 tenderness, and safety, and loving-kindness ; whose 
 incessant guardianship made, in this, our poverty 
 more blessed than if we had been heirs to 
 
 " All the wealth that fills the breeze 
 When Coromandcl's ships return from Indian s?as:" 
 
WANT SOMETHING TO READ. 73 
 
 which reminds me that in our earlier days we 
 thought very little of poetry. Nobody ever both- 
 ered us with Dr. Watts's hymns and the like, nor 
 crammed our poor little brains with cant words and 
 phrases, of which the ideas were either totally in- v 
 comprehensible, or received in a form so material 
 as to be either ludicrous or profane. Accidentally 
 we lighted on "The Busy Bee," "Hush, my Babe, 
 lie still, and slumber," took a fancy to them, and 
 learned them by heart; also, many of the Original 
 Poems for Children, which have been the delight of 
 more than one generation. But we never meddled 
 with religious poetry, nor were set to learn it as a 
 task any more than the Bible the book of books 
 which we all read aloud reverently, verse by verse, 
 elders and youngers alternately, every Sunday even- 
 ing. 
 
 For our secular reading, out of lesson-tirne, we 
 were obliged to depend on ourselves. The treat 
 of being read to was quite impossible in our busy 
 household. Therefore, possessing what is now call- 
 ed, in grand phrase, u a healthy animalism," which 
 I take to mean the ordinary sanitary state of most 
 children who are neither physicked nor " coddled," 
 we gave the largest portion of our energies to play, 
 and, with the exceptions mentioned, were rather in- 
 different to books. Gradually, however on wet 
 days and long winter evenings we began to want 
 something to read something real ; for we were 
 D 
 
74 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 wakening up to the conviction that rocs were not 
 as common as sparrows, and that the Liliputian 
 which some of us longed to find, and be a most 
 loving Glumdalclitch to, was 'not likely to be pick- 
 ed up in our field, or any field. In short, we wanted 
 facts. 
 
 And here came in a book, which I have since 
 suspected to be as fabulous as Robinson Crusoe it- 
 self, but which then we entirely credited Roland?* 
 Travels Round the World. Its hero, with his com- 
 panions the naturalist, the man of science, and the 
 doctor who, I recollect, had a most nnmedical pro- 
 pensity for eating with all their adventures, were 
 an inexhaustible delight. Earnestly we longed to 
 penetrate to the interior of that marvelous Africa, 
 the map of which, so often consulted by us prior 
 to the days of lion-hunting Cummings, persevering 
 brothers Lander, and modest brave Livingstones, 
 was, except for the coast-line, a mere blank, a cir- 
 cumstance probably all the better for our not too 
 veracious KolandL 
 
 Another book of adventure, which likewise I 
 have never seen since, and which maturer wisdom 
 is still loth to recognize as fiction, was Miss Porter's 
 Narrative of Sir Edward Seaward. Strange that no 
 enterprising modern publisher* has ever disinterred 
 and revived in a cheap edition this charming old 
 
 * I have since heard that this has been done in Bonn's " Trav- 
 eler's Library." 
 
WANT SOMETHING TO READ. 75 
 
 book, with its bona fide simplicity of detail, its ex- 
 quisite picture of the solitary island where Seaward 
 and his Eliza are wrecked, and live a la Crusoe 
 and Mrs. Crusoe during the first years of their 
 married life ; where they afterward found a colony ; 
 then, returning to England, bask in the favor of 
 King George and Queen Caroline ; finally becom- 
 ing Sir Edward and Lady Seaward, though some- 
 thing less happy, as the reader feels, than the young 
 pair cast away on that lovely, lonely Pacific island. 
 
 The Pacific seas gained another charm for us 
 when somewhat about this era we lighted on G. L. 
 Craik's New Zealanders. Every many-voweled poly- 
 syllabic name, every grim countenance therein, was 
 familiar to us as the names and faces of our com- 
 panions. Much we lamented that tattoo and paint, 
 mats and war-clubs, were not the customary cos- 
 tume of youthful Britons ; and to live in a hut, and 
 squat round a baked pig, seemed to us preferable 
 to any civilized notions about houses and dinners. 
 As it was, the sole thing left to us was to practice 
 drinking out of a calabash, holding the not cala- 
 bash, alas! but mug high up, at arm's length, in 
 the approved New Zealand fashion. I should be 
 sorry to confess how many times we soaked our 
 pinafores through and through before this art was 
 attained in perfection. 
 
 Captain Cook's Voyages, and his Geography, in 
 two thick quartos, with maps and engravings innu- 
 
76 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 merable, came in also to confirm the mania for all 
 things pertaining to the southern seas, which last- 
 ed a long time, and may have influenced the fam- 
 ily fortunes more than was then dreamed of. To 
 this day, both to those of us who have seen it and 
 those who have not, there lingers a curious charm 
 about that antipodean hemisphere, with its strange 
 plants, strange animals, strange stars, strange skies ; 
 its mysterious half-known continents, and its solita- 
 ry coral islands starting up from the depths of un- 
 discovered seas. 
 
 This was our sole bit of romance. Compared 
 with what I have since heard of other people's child- 
 hood, ours seems to have been the most matter-of- 
 fact imaginable. We lived in a new manufactur- 
 ing district, where was not a trace of legendary lore; 
 and we must have been quite "old" children before 
 we ever heard about ghosts or fairies. Also, our 
 elders and superiors, though extremely well educa- 
 ted, happened to have a far stronger bias toward 
 science, mathematics, and general solid knowledge 
 than toward art or the poetical side of literature. 
 The first bit of real art I ever remember to have 
 got hold of was Flaxman's Homer beloved still as 
 the key-note of what has been the pleasant music 
 of a lifetime ; but I am now writing of books, not 
 pictures. It stirred me up to the study of the Iliad 
 and Odyssey: these two, with Thomson's Seasons 
 and Young's Night Thoughts, after I had conquered 
 
WANT SOMETHING TO READ. 77 
 
 a great dislike to the frontispiece, representing a 
 gentleman sitting at night in his study, and Death, 
 a skeleton with scythe and hour-glass, coming to 
 hold with him a little cheerful conversation, consti- 
 tute the only poetry books of which I have any dis- 
 tinct recollection. 
 
 Nobody else studied them ; the family bent was 
 all toward science. Many books of this era come 
 to mind: Endless Amusements, which would have 
 deserved its name with us save for the unfortunate 
 fact that the experiments therein were quite imprac- 
 ticable for want of capital ; the Boy's Oivn Book, and 
 the Boy's Book of Science. This latter was thumbed 
 over from morning till night as may be discover- 
 ed if its relics be ever exhumed for the benefit of 
 its owner's descendants but I myself never got 
 farther than the illustrations, which were very pret- 
 ty and artistic, and consisted of little fat nude boys 
 busy over a blow-pipe, or an electrical machine, or 
 a series of mysterious phials. I admired them much, 
 but thought the little fellows looked rather cold, and 
 wondered if it were always necessary to conduct sci- 
 entific experiments without one's clothes. 
 
 At this period we took to book-borrowing, in 
 which our chief trouble was that benevolent friends 
 would persist in lending us "childish" books. One 
 of us, the little one, still recalls having Sandford and 
 Merton thus foisted upon him, which he indignantly 
 rejected ; when, being told to go and choose what 
 
78 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 he liked, he returned with Brande's Chemistry, Mrs. 
 Marcet's Conversations, lire's Dictionary of Arts and 
 Sciences, or something else of the kind, which alone 
 he considered " interesting." 
 
 To this cause I attribute our indifference to Miss 
 Edgeworth, Mrs. Barbauld, and other excellent writ- 
 ers for children that we read them at too late an 
 age, when we wanted to know about men, women, 
 and things in general. Thus I remember luxuri- 
 ating in Goldsmith's dry school histories ; having 
 a personal friendship for Themistocles and Epami- 
 nondas, a familiar acquaintance with all the old Ro- 
 mans, and a passionate pity for Charles I., which 
 made me dream over and over again, for years, of 
 his taking refuge in our house, my putting him into 
 the cupboard or up the chimney, then dismissing 
 him to safety with an infinitude of blessings, caress- 
 es, and tears. After such a romance as this, what 
 to me were Harry and Lucy, Rosamond, and the 
 Parents* Assistant ? 
 
 To one writer of this class, now almost forgotten, 
 I must make an exception. Few books in all my 
 life have ever done me so much good the true aim 
 of all good books as Mrs. Holland's. Simple, nat- 
 ural, neither dragging the young mind down to its 
 supposed level, which it has already got far beyond, 
 nor burdening it with dry morality, or, what is 
 worse, religious cant, yet breathing throughout the 
 true spirit both of religion and morality, her stories 
 
WANT SOMETHING TO READ. 79 
 
 for young people, such as the Clergyman's Widow, 
 Blind Farmer, and Son of a Genius, deserve to live 
 as long as there are any young people to read them. 
 Writers for children are too apt to forget how un- 
 commonly "sharp" is the little public with which 
 they have to deal ; how, whatever be its own vol- 
 untary make-believes, it is quick as lightning to de- 
 tect and spurn any make-believe in grown-up peo- 
 ple, especially when meant to take in its small self. 
 Hypocritical goodness or impossible self-denial it 
 rejects at once, as it does pictures of life where the 
 moral is incessantly intruding, where the bad child 
 is always naughty, and the good child never does 
 any thing wrong; where the parents are paragons 
 of superlative wisdom and faultless perfection, and 
 every action, good or bad, immediately meets its re- 
 ward. Such tales are not of the least value, because 
 they are not like life ; a fact which no one is quicker 
 to discover than a quick child, who feels that it is 
 itself both naughty and good sometimes within the 
 same half hour; that its parents do not know every 
 thing, are occasionally unjust and cross; that it often 
 does wrong unpunished, and does well unpraised. 
 Therefore beware ; give a child as much of fancy 
 and imagination as ever you choose, in fairy tale, 
 legend, and the like, which it will play with as it 
 does with toys, and take no harm from; but, in 
 Heaven's name, respect in it that instinct which 
 comes direct from Heaven, and never, in word or 
 
80 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 writing, in teaching or in conduct, set before it as 
 reality that which is not true. 
 
 About this stage in our juvenile history a remark- 
 able fact occurred. Our next-door neighbor began 
 taking in a periodical a large, small-printed folio 
 sheet, with more " reading" in it than any newspa- 
 per, entitled Chambers' s Edinburgh Journal. How 
 we used to rush in on Saturday afternoons to bor- 
 row it, and rush off again to some corner, where it 
 could be read in quiet ! How we hid it, and squab- 
 bled over it! what tears it cost, what reproofs! till 
 at last, as the only chance of peace, the Journal was 
 forbidden ever to enter the house. Consequently, 
 we read it in the garden. I am afraid I know 
 we were very naughty ; but the thirst for reading 
 was now becoming uncontrollable in all of us. I 
 can recall, spite of the guilty conscience with which 
 I handled this grand bone of contention, what ex- 
 quisite delight there was in hiding it under my pin- 
 afore, or under a big stone, till I could devour it in 
 secret ; how, even yet, I can see clearly the shape, 
 form, and type of some of the articles, such as the 
 leader entitled " The Downdraught," and the bit of 
 poetry beginning 
 
 "Pretty Polly Partan, she was a damsel gay " 
 
 little, how little thinking that I should ever be con 
 fessing this in the pages of the same Journal ! 
 But all this while, in none of us had germinated, 
 
WANT SOMETHING TO READ. 81 
 
 in any shape, the romantic element. With me it 
 first sprouted, I believe, not through any thing I 
 read, but through being read to, myself and my fa- 
 vorite companion, during one summer, and at in- 
 tervals during several other summers and winters. 
 Dim as a dream are those readings, chosen wisely 
 by one who knew better than most people what 
 children's tastes were, and especially what sort of 
 tastes we two had. Fragments out of unknown 
 books, Mary Hewitt's poems and tales, Mrs. Aus- 
 ten's German translations, Shakspeare, Scott, Chau- 
 cer old ballads and modern verses a heteroge- 
 neous mixture, listened to on sunshiny mornings, 
 with the rose-scent in the hedges, and the birds 
 bopping about on the grass-plot ; or on winter even- 
 ings, rocking in the American rocking-chair, in the 
 snug little school-room, which neither we nor our 
 children are ever likely to revisit more. Dim as a 
 dream, I say, but sweet as any thing in my whole 
 childhood, remains the grateful remembrance of 
 these readings and the voice that read, which to 
 this day, when enjoying the ineffable luxury of sit- 
 ting sewing and listening to a book, seems to me 
 about the pleasantest voice of any woman's I ever 
 heard. 
 
 The next epoch I have to chronicle was the grand 
 
 turning-point of our childhood the literary crisis 
 
 of our lives. One fatal winter, we, whose doors 
 
 sickness had rarely or never entered, caught suc- 
 
 D2 
 
82 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 cessively measles, whooping-cough, and chicken- 
 pox, and never went out to play again till the 
 spring. Then, shut up in a few small rooms, wea- 
 ry, sickly, and cross not dangerously ill, but ill 
 enough to be a burden to ourselves and a plague to 
 one another, what could we do to pass the heavy 
 time away ? What was to become of us ? 
 
 I really do not know what would have become 
 of us, so far as temper was concerned, had it not 
 been for the interference of a benign providence in 
 the shape of the bookseller of the town, who granted 
 us free range of his circulating library. To him 
 and to his "young man" growing an old man 
 now who took the trouble of selecting our books, 
 changing them as often or letting us keep them as 
 long as ever we liked who was as patient and 
 good-natured with us poor sick children as if we 
 had been the grandest paying subscribers, I hereby 
 offer, should this book lie on his counter, as proba- 
 bly it will, our warmest gratitude. It may be a 
 hint to other book-lenders, less mindful of the crav- 
 ings of reading children ; and it is a relief to our 
 minds thankfully to confess that much of what any 
 of us has ever been, or may be, is owing to that 
 " winter of our discontent," which was made such 
 "glorious summer" by this unlimited supply of 
 books. 
 
 What they consisted of it is impossible to enu- 
 merate. I know they comprised fact and fiction, 
 
WANT SOMETHING TO HEAD. 83 
 
 provender solid and light, classical and unclassical, 
 and that their quantity was enormous ; that they 
 set us fairly afloat on the great sea of literature, 
 which thenceforward to us never had a bound. 
 
 Of course, individual tastes developed rapidly. 
 Science, from a bias, became a steadily progressing 
 knowledge ; art, from a mere fancy, grew into a 
 passion ; and imaginative and romantic tendencies 
 sprung up full-grown, as it were, in a day. Our 
 range of novel-reading soon comprised every thing 
 we could lay hands upon : Scott, Bulwer, Mrs. Opie, 
 Miss Austen, and a writer whom we knew nothing 
 about, but that he was almost as funny as his name, 
 which was " Boz." I also remember our picking 
 up the first number of a serial which we, already 
 beginning to be critical, considered rather dull, and 
 the characters decidedly unpleasant : it was entitled 
 Vanity Fair. Of inferior romances, the amount of 
 trash we consumed was something past reckoning; 
 but, like all literary rubbish, it slipped out of our 
 heads as fast as ever it was " shot" into them. We 
 never took any harm from it that I am aware of. 
 
 And here I would fain say a word about our ex- 
 perience of what are termed " improper" books. 
 We never had any, although we were allowed to 
 read ad libitum every thing that came in our way ; 
 for a very simple reason the guardians of our mor- 
 als put every thing really hurtful quite out of our 
 way. No tabooed volumes ; no pages torn out, nor, 
 
84 STUDIES FEOM LIFE. 
 
 as I have heard of an excellent paterfamilias doing, 
 marked in the margin, "Not to be read," which 
 seems a good deal to expect from juvenile self-de- 
 nial. Our elders never exacted from us any thing 
 they did not require from themselves: all literary 
 provender wholly unfit for our youthful digestion 
 was either never known by us to be in the house, 
 or, better still, was never brought into the house at 
 all. The only instance of prohibition or hesitation 
 that I ever remember was the Vicar of WaJccfield, 
 which (why I can not to this day discover), probably 
 from some advice of far less wise friends, was laid 
 on the top shelf of the book-cupboard with, " Better 
 not read it until you are a little older." I gazed at 
 it longingly for some weeks, then climbed up, read 
 the first twenty pages or so standing perched on 
 the back of a chair, and relinquished it as being not 
 at all "interesting." 
 
 Shakspeare even that great difficulty of parents 
 was freely allowed ; but no one took advantage 
 of the permission except myself, and I did not 
 care much for him, except for the purely imagin- ' 
 ative plays, such as the Tempest, Midsummer Nights 
 Dream, and Winter's Tale. I suppose I must have 
 read him all through, for I can not remember the 
 time when I did not know Shakspeare ; but I un- 
 derstood and appreciated him very little for a great 
 many years. As for seeing any evil in him, I would 
 as soon have thought of seeing it in the Bible, which, 
 
WANT SOMETHING TO READ. 85 
 
 not to speak irreverently of the Holy Word, con- 
 tains a good deal that the fastidious delicacy of the 
 present day might consider " not exactly proper for 
 children." 
 
 Therefore, if individual experience may be allow- 
 ed to say so, I do think that with children brought 
 up in a virtuous, decorous home, where " to the pure 
 all things are pure," the best plan is to exclude en- 
 tirely all glaring coarseness and immoralities, but 
 especially immoralities, for the tone of a book has 
 far more influence than its language ; and Don Juan 
 has done incalculably more harm than the grossest 
 phraseology of Christian -hearted, moral, though 
 rude-tongued Shakspeare. Afterward-, let the young 
 creatures read every thing and take their chance. 
 In that evil world which one sickens at their ever 
 knowing (and yet they must know it and fight 
 through it, as their Maker ordains, or He would 
 never have put them into it), the best safeguard is, 
 not total ignorance of vice, but the long habitual 
 practice and love of virtue. 
 
 Into that world, across the enchanted ocean of 
 which our pilot was the benevolent bookseller, who, 
 I trust, under this anonymous guise, and through 
 the oblivion of years, may yet recognize his own 
 good deed, we children quickly passed. Therein, 
 our readings, like our doings, concern nobody but 
 ourselves, so that I will no longer continue the 
 chronicle. 
 
86 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 It will, however, have served some purpose if, 
 in its literal facts, it carries any suggestions to ei- 
 ther reading children or their parents during what 
 may be called the cacoethes legendi; when toys de- 
 light not, plays weary, playmates are quarreled with, 
 and the sole cry from morning till night is, "I want 
 something to read." 
 
WAK-SPARKLES. 87 
 
 tP ar- Sparkles. 
 
 IT is one of the saddest things about war about 
 this our present war, bursting upon us suddenly aft- 
 er a long season of peace, that we gradually become 
 used to it ; at least we middle classes, whom it has 
 not as yet touched so nearly as the upper and low- 
 er ranks. The first horror, the first triumph hav- 
 ing worn off, we return to daily life, which jogs on 
 just the same; and "News from the Crimea' 7 be- 
 comes a kind of indefinite diurnal interest, strong 
 indeed, but vague and unreal. We shudder, glow, 
 or weep over it, but in a heroic, poetical, picturesque 
 way, as it were a tale that is told ; we find it hard 
 to be received as a naked reality. In fact, the war 
 altogether seems like a great fire ; so far distant that 
 we can hardly form an idea of the conflagration un- 
 less by some faint smoke on the horizon, or a frag- 
 ment of charred wood thrown for miles, startling us 
 with a visible sign of how great is the unseen burn- 
 ing. 
 
 This fancy and these moralizings came into my 
 mind the other day while pacing the Waterloo term- 
 inus. Therefore, jotting down a few observations 
 made that day, it appears not tin fitting to call them 
 by the above title War-sparkles. 
 
88 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 The great war-fire had been burning down dim- 
 ly; Alma, Balaklava, Inkermann, began to be talk- 
 ed of calmly as historical names, not stammered over 
 with a throbbing awe. Good Heaven ! shall any of 
 us now living ever forget that September day when 
 we first read the limes' account of the battle of the 
 Alma? that September moonlight night, when in 
 London streets, provincial towns, and in the deep 
 silence of country villages, people gathered togeth- 
 er and asked one another "the last news," or spec- 
 ulated as to what sort of strange, new, impossible- 
 to-be-realized scene the rnoon was illuminating on 
 the heights of Alma ? 
 
 But now all this excitement had subsided ; peo- 
 ple went about the streets on their own business, or 
 rushed to and fro on railway lines. What a rush- 
 ing there was on this very line, along which I was 
 taking a short, luggageless journey, entailing no bus- 
 tle, no trouble, and no good-by's most favorable 
 circumstances for making those studies from the life 
 of which a railway terminus is a first-rate academy. 
 Being early, the platform is rather empty of human- 
 ities, so I amuse rr^self with looking at some lug- 
 gage scattered about, and inventing imaginary own- 
 ers for it. One rather anomalous heap particularly 
 attracts me. I have even the curiosity to inquire 
 what it is. 
 
 " Baggage for the Crimea," quoth the porter. 
 
 I start, remembering that this line is the direct 
 
WAR-SPARKLES. 89 
 
 highway to the East, and that probably every regi- 
 ment dispatched on foreign service must have paced 
 this platform where I am now pacing in such leis- 
 urely laziness, waiting for the train, with no one to 
 part from, no one to leave behind. A certain dis- 
 comfort seizes me ; something like what I feel in 
 reading with quiet, terroiiess curiosity the lists of 
 killed and wounded ; something like what I felt this 
 winter in walking through the streets, and seeing 
 every third person in mourning; bright, warm col- 
 ors seemed unnatural and unkind. 
 
 "Baggage for the Crimea," reiterates my friend 
 the porter, shoving it along without a bit of senti- 
 ment. 
 
 It is an officer's trunk : his name is painted 
 thereon in those glittering white letters which 
 trunk-makers so greatly affect. And that large 
 canvass roll is probably his bedding. Poor fel- 
 low ! many a heavy sleep he may have upon it ; 
 or it may bear him in months of weary languish- 
 ing sickness ; or upon it he may die. But that is 
 taking a melancholy view of things never the 
 wisest view, under any circumstances. 
 
 And here come a set of fellows who are evident- 
 ly bent on any thing but melancholy. One of 
 them jostled me in the ticket-place when I was 
 meditatively smiling over the penetrative police- 
 man's remark, " Second class, ma'am, I s'pose?" 
 Now they tumble out on the platform by twos 
 
90 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 and threes, in a vain attempt at order, which is 
 counteracted by their jolly state of mind, ancl body 
 too, to judge by the half- tipsy chat. 
 
 " There they go, one after the other, like sheep," 
 observes Porter No. 1 sarcastically to Porter No. 2. 
 
 A simile only too -appropriate as regards their ' 
 fate, since these are evidently recruits going down 
 to Southampton to be drilled into something like 
 capability, and then shipped off to supply the exi- 
 gencies of our army in the Crimea. Some of them 
 have a lowering, desperado look the offscouring 
 of respectability, which is always drafted into "our 
 military defenses," and oftentimes, to the great sur- 
 prise of Eespectability, becomes not so bad a de- 
 fense after all. Others are mere lads more fit to 
 play at soldiers on a village green than to be tar- 
 gets for Cossack bullets. A few decent young 
 men are among them, but by far the greater por- 
 tion belong to the awkward squad. Truly, if out 
 of these shambling clodpates is to be evolved a sec- 
 tion of our British army that glory of the world 
 one can not but regard with mingled admiration 
 and amazement the drill-sergeant. 
 
 But on they stumble, to the sound of their own 
 tuneless and muzzy "hurrah," and the waving of 
 a heterogeneous mass of indefinite head-coverings, 
 to each of which is appended the ominous bunch 
 of ribbons that must have flaunted so cruelly in 
 the eyes of mothers or sweethearts not many days 
 
WAR-SPARKLES. 91 
 
 since ; for rarely is scapegrace so "hopeless, or rep- 
 robate fallen so low, but that there is some woman 
 to love, or at least to pity him. So even these 
 half-drunken young boors acquire a certain interest 
 in my eyes, thinking of the " old folk at home." 
 
 Well, they are all packed penned I may say 
 in some carriage not far distant, to judge by the 
 hammering of feet I hear, and the mingling of 
 most sweet voices in that feebly uproarious cheer. 
 But it dies out, and somebody starts a new idea 
 namely, a song; the rest snatch it up, and bellow 
 it out in the same disconnected fashion, every one 
 ingeniously choosing his own time, tune, and words. 
 Now and then I catch a note or two, and find the 
 dreary noise is meant for an English version of 
 " Auld lang syne." 
 
 "Jolly enough they are," observed occupant 
 second of our carriage a comfortable farmer to 
 occupant third, just leaping in. " Recruits, sure 
 enough !" 
 
 "Urn!" hums occupant third, with a slightly 
 scornful air, either meant for the said recruits or 
 the civilian opposite, for he himself undoubtedly is 
 of the regular army a well-trained, well-looking 
 non-commissioned officer. 
 
 "Queer set of chaps, them," pursues the farmer, 
 evidently desiring, though with a vague awe, to be 
 conversational and polite toward his military neigh- 
 bor. 
 
92 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 " Um !" repeats the soldier. " Took a lot of 'em 
 down to Southampton myself last week." He 
 speaks in the tone with which our agricultural 
 friend might speak of a drove of his bullocks; 
 and then, drawing his cloak round him, relapses 
 into dignified silence. Was he ever a raw recruit, 
 I wonder? 
 
 But now the bell rings, and our train stirs a lit- 
 tle ; in a minute we shall be off. I hear a sudden 
 lull in the song a total silence and then a weak, 
 very weak and uncertain " Hurrah !" 
 
 We are moving. It is probably nay, of a cer- 
 tainty the last look that some of this train full of 
 travelers will ever take of great old London, with 
 its busy bright terminus, its murky, multitudinous 
 labyrinth of streets, which we behold in an ever- 
 varying panorama, moving below us as we fly on 
 past Vauxhall. 
 
 I wonder whether any one of those fellows, who, 
 their cheering having ceased, are tolerably quiet 
 now, has put his head out of the window, and 
 thought as the dullest and wickedest young 
 scamp must think at times of some little pleas- 
 ant fragment of the past ? Has any one inly specu- 
 lated in his rude way about the chance of " never 
 coming back no more?" 
 
 Doubtless no ; for we all are apt to see only at 
 our neighbor's shoulder the fate which stands in- 
 visibly behind our own ; very few minds, and un- 
 
WAR-SPARKLES. 93 
 
 der very rare circumstances, are haunted by the 
 strongly impressed dread which is, in fact, the un- 
 recognized truth of all life that every minute is a 
 " no more." 
 
 " Have an orange, miss? Eeal nice ! Do, now." 
 No, my benevolent farmer-neighbor; no, thank 
 you. You were little aware on what a thread of 
 fine-drawn sentiment and philosophy you were 
 breaking, and as little aware, my honest friend, 
 that your quiet fellow-passenger, whom you evi- 
 dently took for some respectable person, probably 
 a dress-maker, going to see her friends in the coun- 
 try, would ever put you down in an article. You 
 are not particularly interesting ; I have traveled 
 with the like of you by dozens. I know your 
 plump, well-outlined, apple-like profile perfectly 
 a thoroughly honest English profile rosy and 
 good-humored in youth, gradually descending to 
 the rubicund and jolly in old age. I have no 
 doubt that your name is John Smith, or Thomas 
 Brown, or some other thoroughly English name ; 
 that your antecedents, Smith or Brown, have been 
 "grown" for generations at and about the country 
 town whither you kindly ask if I am going. I 
 conjecture you have unquestionably been for the 
 last ten years the beau, par excellence, of all the 
 shop-keeping beauty in the said town, until you 
 shocked its feelings by bringing home from some 
 rival town, or perhaps from London even, a Mrs. 
 
94 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 Smith or Mrs. Brown, after which you subsided 
 into the sage proprieties of middle age. Yet you 
 are conscious that you are a very good-looking fel- 
 low still agreeable too and that such a quiet per- 
 son as myself can not but feel honored by j'our po- 
 lite and benevolent attentions in the matter of the 
 orange, and the query as to my destination. Cer- 
 tainly, my friend, you mean well, and I am natu- 
 rally open to kindness; but, I repeat, you are not 
 interesting. I have no great wish for your conver- 
 sation ; I prefer watching your opposite fellow- 
 traveler, the soldier in the next compartment. 
 
 Is he conning over that great sad mystery " no 
 more"? Is he bound for the Crimea, I wonder? 
 Has he any friends left behind in town, that he 
 presses his mustached physiognomy so closa to the 
 window, and rubs the pane clear from mist, and 
 gazes back with a gaze very sad and serious for a 
 handsome young red-coat upon that huge, fog-over- 
 hung London, whose intersected lines of lights are 
 becoming fainter, dwindling into lamps here and 
 there, with black hazy patches between, brick-fields, 
 and commons, and hedged-meadows, as we sweep 
 on into the regular country. 
 
 That curiously earnest look interests me, even in 
 a soldier. Some minutes after, he accepts from my 
 quondam friend the reversion of Punch, and re- 
 moves close under the carriage-lamp to investigate 
 it quite in his line, for the sketch is that admira- 
 
WAR-SPARKLES. 95 
 
 ble one of the Crimean navvy digging Lord Bag- 
 Ian out of the mud, with the motto, " Spades are 
 trumps !" I take the favorable opportunity of in- 
 vestigating him. 
 
 Certainly there is a great deal of downright beau- 
 ty sown broadcast about the world. That head 
 would make a first-rate study. Of the aquiline 
 type, brown-skinned, dark-eyed, with a capacious 
 brow, and a well-cut mouth and chin delicate, yet 
 extremely characteristic, close and firm. The sort 
 of head which convinces you that, in whatever sta- 
 tion its owner was born, his present one is a step or 
 two above it, since he himself is the sort of man 
 that is sure to rise. Now I understand the reason 
 of the stripes on his sleeve, and his being intrusted 
 to " take a lot o 7 them to Southampton." I have no 
 doubt, young as he looks certainly under thirty 
 that fellow could easily have commanded a regiment. 
 
 He smiles in a grave, patronizing way over 
 Punch's jocularities on his profession, and returns 
 the paper. 
 
 " Sharp doings out there," remarks its owner. 
 
 a Rather," with a twist of the mustache, indicat- 
 ing sublime indifference either to the subject or to 
 the ignorant interlocutor. 
 
 "Going to the Crimea?" 
 
 "Our regiment's ordered out in the spring." 
 
 So my little fabric of sentiment falls to the 
 ground ; that thoughtful look was not a good-by. 
 
96 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 "Ever been on foreign service?' 7 
 " Eleven years." 
 
 " Malta Canada West Indies Calcutta." 
 
 Our military friend runs over the names as care- 
 lessly as an omnibus-cad ejaculates, "Bank Ox'd 
 St Totten' Co't-road." The civilian draws back, 
 and his next question is put with a certain wonder* 
 ing deference. 
 
 " Been long returned ?" 
 
 " Nine weeks." 
 
 And the young maD, pulling his foraging-cap 
 over his brow, throws himself back in his corner, 
 with a plainly apparent air of " What-do-you-know- 
 about-these-sort-of-things?" But the other meekly 
 and reverentially persisting in his civilities, the sol- 
 dier at last condescends to show that even a son of 
 Mars is not insensible to the merits of oranges, and 
 responds briefly to a few remarks on the war in the 
 Crimea. 
 
 "Will it last, do you think?" 
 
 "Maybe; but most likely the best of it will be 
 over by the time we get there." 
 
 "How do you feel about going out?" with slight 
 hesitation, as if the worthy questioner had an un- 
 comfortable consciousness of how lie should feel un- 
 der the circumstances. 
 
 "Me! Shouldn't mind if we were off to-mor- 
 row." And with a little snort, too entirely indiffer- 
 
WAR-SPARKLES. 97 
 
 ent to be even contemptuous, he settles himself once 
 more, shutting his eyes, and turning away from the 
 lamplight, which sparkles merrily on his trim regi- 
 mentals, and makes quite starry the metal ornament 
 on his belt the " bursting ball." As the head lies t 
 back, the face as quiet as that of a child in the cra- 
 dle, I can not help watching it, and speculating on 
 the life of its owner his wild wandering life " from 
 Indus to the pole ;" also what his coming home was 
 like after those eleven years whether he had any 
 home to come to any mother to trace in those set 
 bronzed features her lad, who must have been a 
 mere stripling when he went away ? He was then 
 a recruit, as raw, perhaps, as some of those in the 
 carriage hard by. 
 
 Looking at the firm, handsome head, and truly 
 gentleman -like bearing of this young man, who 
 must have begun life in the ranks, I fell into a rev- 
 erie concerning the influence of character on circum- 
 stances circumstances on character and where 
 was the just division of results attributable to both, 
 "A man's a man for a' that!" undeniable fact. 
 But, then, " Every man is as God made him." How 
 far can he himself, of his own free will, remodel or 
 degrade the original article ? That problem, I sus- 
 pect, never will be decided on this side of the' 
 grave : the great solution as we hope of all life's 
 mysteries. 
 
 At present it is sufficient to read, as I gladly do 
 E 
 
98 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 in the countenance of this man, only a step above 
 the grade of a common soldier, confirmation of 
 my favorite truth, that, granted certain conditions, 
 which are denied to few, a man's career lies appar- 
 ently in his own hands, and he is exactly what he 
 chooses to make himself. 
 
 A pause at a station, and our sergeant I believe 
 that is his rank, though I can not vouch for it, be- 
 ing quite unlearned in military lore opens his 
 eyes. He has not been asleep, for I have noticed 
 him do the same several times, and look with a 
 lazy yet earnest stare up to the carriage-roof. 
 Query, where were his thoughts roaming? to Mal- 
 ta, or Canada, or Calcutta, or the West Indies? 
 Sweeping over his eleven years abroad, or con- 
 verging into that small point the nine weeks he 
 has been at home? Anyhow, he must have enough 
 materials for meditation, Heaven knows! and I 
 trust, judging by his air of goodness, steadfastness, 
 and even woman-like sweetness when he smiles, 
 that he need not be in any great dread of Heav- 
 en's knowing them all or man either. Let us 
 hope that, serious, even sad, as he was looking just 
 now, within these nine weeks there has been an 
 old mother's hand laid on those brown curls, in- 
 flicting on his heart no conscience-sting, no fear 
 lest she should find out how much wickeder was 
 the man who came home than her lad who went 
 away. 
 
WAR-SPARKLES. , 99 
 
 " Aw what carriage is this? IVe lost my car- 
 riage aw " 
 
 And pushed in by the guard, for the train is 
 moving, enters a stray from elsewhere, a very new- 
 ly-fledged youngling of the upper classes decided- 
 ly, as he takes care immediately to inform us. 
 
 u Aw is this a second-class carriage? I never 
 was in a second-class carriage before. Aw" scan- 
 ning with his eye-glass the two compartments, and 
 turning up his nose at the bare seats, which might 
 be newly painted certainly without ruining the 
 company " aw deuced uncomfortable !" 
 
 He speaks with that drawl which, I have heard, 
 is considered good English in the "first circles," at 
 least in a segment of them, and manifests great in- 
 difference to the letter r. He is small, has a young 
 face, weak in outline, is of light complexion, with 
 light hair. He might pass for an Eton lad home 
 for the holidays, only he wears a magnificent ring, 
 and keeps perpetually stroking his upper lip, as if 
 to assure himself that no accident has happened to 
 the indefinite hirsute appendage there. Finally, 
 discovering that he is locked in, and must perforce 
 make acquaintance with a second-class carriage, he 
 tries to settle himself, noisily enough throwing his 
 cloak about, and talking very loud to us all in gen- 
 eral. We are silent ; but the soldier, under cover 
 of his handsome mustache, indulges in an amused 
 smile ; and a little news-boy, who has crept into the 
 
100 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 carriage with his bundle, eyes with considerable re- 
 spect the pompous boy-man opposite. 
 
 "Aw got a Times, my lad? No! Must have 
 a Times very important that I should have the 
 latest intelligence. Could I get a Times at ?" 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " What have you here? Aw deuced provok- 
 ing," snatching, glancing over, and crumpling more 
 than one paper, which, however, he returns without 
 paying for. "I always prefer the Times. Any 
 news from the East to-night ?" generally addressed 
 to every body. 
 
 " Can't say rather fancy not," gruffly answers 
 the sergeant, who sits directly opposite to him, and 
 toward whom his eye travels. 
 
 " Oh, I see what's your regiment ?" 
 
 A glance, indicating strongly "What business is 
 that of yours ?" then a monosyllabic reply. 
 
 " The th ; not a bad regiment, neither. Going 
 on foreign service ?" 
 
 " No," gruffer than ever. 
 
 " Of course not; I forgot. It's the th and the 
 th that are ordered to the Crimea. I'm off my- 
 self there to-morrow night." 
 
 This annihilating information was given with 
 hands in pocket and chin in air, in an assumption 
 of indifference. 
 
 The soldier answered with a military salute and 
 due military respect, "Indeed, sir." 
 
WAR-SPARKLES. 101 
 
 "Yes," said the boy -officer, condescendingly 
 leaning over to converse with the non-commission- 
 ed. "I received my orders yesterday. I'm going 
 home for to-night, and to-morrow I sail. Quick 
 
 work, as Lord C said to me at the Horse 
 
 Guards this morning. But the army must be sup- 
 plied ; the case is urgent, you know ; we are very 
 much wanted out there.' 7 
 
 " Ay, sir," with a most creditable gravity. 
 
 " By-the-by," evidently desirous of a talk, to show 
 how thoroughly "up" he was in professional mat- 
 ters, "how many do you think they are recruiting 
 per day at the Horse Guards ? One thousand ! 
 
 Incredible! As I said to Lord C when we 
 
 were driving to-day to the army agent's, the thing 
 is impossible, and I don't believe it." 
 
 " Nor I, sir," with a quiet smile ; " and I'm a re- 
 cruiting-officer myself, stationed at " (a town 
 
 not far off). 
 
 " Curious. Yet I've never seen you about my 
 father's place ; but you may have seen me doubt- 
 less you have seen me for I've often gone about 
 in recruiting-parties, with my gun on my shoulder, 
 and my dogs, pretending to be out shooting ha ! 
 ha ! I like recruiting very much myself; it's cap- 
 ital fun. These poachers and the like, how many 
 of them do you beat up in a week ? But a thou- 
 sand a day ! Aw I assured Lord C , from my 
 
 own experience, that the thing was impossible." 
 
102 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 " I think so too, sir." 
 
 A lull, in which the lad what a mere lad he 
 was! held out a snuff-box graciously: "Take a 
 pinch ;" and began once more in loquacious excite- 
 ment. 
 
 "Your regiment got the new clothing } 7 et? 
 Mine has not ; we sha'n't get it till spring ; very 
 inconvenient. Now" again leaning elbow on 
 knee, in ardent and earnest consultation "what 
 do you think about cross-belts and waist-belts ? As 
 I said at the Horse Guards, I myself am all in fa- 
 vor of the cross-belt. It looks far the best." 
 
 " It does, sir; but then, you see, it has great dis- 
 advantages;" and the other began to explain a few 
 facts on the part of the common soldier and his 
 accoutrements which I was not learned enough 
 thoroughly to comprehend ; but I could not help 
 admiring the intelligent, respectful way in which 
 he brought his practical information to bear on the 
 voluble ignorance of his superior the sound, sen- 
 sible argument of "So I've heard, sir, from them 
 that wears it;" the quiet patience of "You see, sir, 
 it's us soldiers who know: these sort of things don't 
 reach to head-quarters." 
 
 But "these sort of things" were almost wholly 
 the letter of military etiquette ; the cross-belt ques- 
 tion seemed of far more importance to the juvenile 
 warrior than any other, with one momentous ex- 
 ception. 
 
WAR-SPARKLES. 103 
 
 " There is a point, however, in which I quite 
 agree with those at head-quarters, and am very glad 
 it has been settled before I received my orders 
 the question of beards. They ought to be allowed 
 don't you think so? Shaving is such a mon- 
 strous inconvenience," 
 
 " Yes, sir," in a rather smothered, but still duly 
 respectful voice, as the recruiting officer put his 
 hand over his own handsome mouth, so well gar- 
 nished, and abstained from even a look which might 
 hint how very little inconvenience any anti-barbal 
 regulations would apparently have caused to the 
 youth opposite. Not so the civilian beside me, who, 
 at first impressed into attention by John Bull's in- 
 stinctive respect for the first-class passengers of life, 
 had afterward, with John Bull's equally instinctive 
 penetration of shams, listened, broadly grinning, 
 and at this last speech broke out in a regular ex- 
 plosion. 
 
 Luckily, it was harmless. We had reached a 
 station, and our youthful friend, once more eagerly 
 impressing upon us that he had never been in a 
 second-class carriage before, made a precipitate exit 
 from ours. 
 
 "He he ho! I wonder how much a year it 
 costs him in shaving-soap! Pretty fellow he is to 
 fight the Russians ! Is that the stuff your officers 
 are made of, my friend ?" 
 
 The recruiting sergeant, who had been indulging 
 
104 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 in a few quiet smiles, now resumed an air of regi- 
 mental dignity. 
 
 "Many a good officer has been made out of 
 worse. He'll improve ; lie is but a lad ; " 
 
 " He seems merry enough at the prospect of go- 
 ing to get shot in the Crimea," I could not help ob- 
 serving. "It will be a rather different thing for 
 his mother, if he has one, when he gets home to- 
 night." 
 
 My friend the farmer looked rather surprised that 
 his friend the supposed dress-maker should make 
 any remark at all ; but he ceased his loud laughter ; 
 possibly he himself had a little lad at home whom 
 he would rather have beating a baby-drum, or see 
 strut about petticoated, shouldering a sham musket, 
 than be sending off to-night to the Crimea. He 
 listened very patiently while I gave him, woman- 
 like, a piece of my mind the other side of the sub- 
 ject, which touches nearest the women and mothers 
 at home. For, empty as the lad was, now he was 
 gone, and his prattle had ceased, my mind involun- 
 tarily drew a vivid picture of the home waiting him 
 to-night for the last night. His father's place, soon 
 to be swept away from him, with all its luxuries 
 its dogs and horses, preserves and game-keepers 
 its hunting, fishing, and driving perhaps, too, the 
 slight adjunct of " the old governor," who had paid 
 scores of needless bills "like a trump;" and of 
 "mamma, who is always fidgeting after a fellow 
 
WAR-SPARKLES. 105 
 
 so !" All gone this gay country-squire life, full of 
 tangible sensuous enjoyments the only life the lad 
 had probably ever known or wished to know and 
 in its stead, hardship, weariness, disease, and pain ; 
 death threatening on all sides in the fight, in the 
 camp, in the trenches, in the dreary desolation of 
 the hospital ; every possible form of human misery 
 by which man's physical and moral strength is 
 tried. And what strength can this poor lad bring 
 to meet them ? Nothing. 
 
 " Ma'am," said my fellow-passenger seriously, ap- 
 parently rather shaken in his dress-maker theory, 
 and a good deal surprised that a woman unsuscepti- 
 ble to polite attentions should enter into any deeper 
 subject, or, indeed, converse at all "ma'am, these 
 things are very true and very unfortunate ; but how 
 can we mend 'em ? Should you like to go out after 
 the fashion of Miss Nightingale?" 
 
 "I think Miss Nightingale is likely to do more 
 for our poor soldiers than all the Privy Council put 
 together." 
 
 " But 'tisn't a woman's business." 
 
 " Any thing is a woman's business which she 
 feels herself impelled to do, and which, without 
 losing her self-respect, she feels capable of doing." 
 
 " Do you feel yourself capable of doing like Miss 
 Nightingale? Would you like to be a nurse at 
 Scutari?" 
 
 A second time I eluded this argumentum act fern- 
 E 2 
 
106 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 mam. " There are probably very few women who 
 would choose such a life, still fewer who are capa- 
 ble of fulfilling it ; but when the two are combined, 
 I see no reason on earth why any woman, high or 
 low, should not undertake the duty, and be rever- 
 enced for doing it." 
 
 " Certainly, ma'am, certainly, "pulling up his coat 
 collar, and composing himself to a snooze. I had 
 wasted my warmth on too thick-skinned an animal. 
 John Bull feels chiefly through his daily newspa- 
 pers. My agrarian friend, within a dozen miles of 
 a snug tea and Mrs. John Bull, had not a keen sens- 
 ibility for either suffering or heroism. 
 
 For the recruiting officer, who, in the next com- 
 partment, had probably caught our conversation 
 very fragmentarily, he only now and then looked 
 round on us civilians out of the corners of his eyes 
 in a kind of mildly superior air. u My good people, 
 you are talking of things you know nothing at all 
 about." 
 
 We do not ! Heaven help us ! That is and has 
 been the great misery of this war, that we at home 
 at least two thirds of us, do know nothing at all 
 about it. We can not take it in ; and because we 
 can not, we are almost powerless against its miser- 
 ies. What can I know I, a comfortable English- 
 woman, traveling thus in peace and pleasure? or 
 you, jolly Englishman, going cosily home to smoke 
 your pipe over the fire, and tell your wife of this 
 
WAR-SPARKLES. 107 
 
 little railway incident, adding, perhaps, as you add- 
 ed but now (with a glance at my black gown, as if 
 there to read the secret of my interest in Scutari), 
 " Eather bad for folk who have relations out there." 
 My honest friend, what can either you or I know 
 of even those things that have reached us within 
 the last two hours ? Can we follow those wretched 
 boy-recruits, who will have weeks on weeks of in- 
 cessant toil and torment ere made into decent sol- 
 diers, and then will be shipped off like cattle, to be 
 hunted down by Cossack lancers, or die in herds by 
 the road-side, and in the trenches, and among the 
 Crimean snows ? Can we picture the future of that 
 young lad we laughed at, or guess how his mother 
 or sister, or some fond fool that cares for him, sim- 
 pleton as he is, will sit at home these many months 
 to come, and picture it too ? Can we tell what may 
 be the end of that fine handsome fellow who lounges 
 opposite under the lamplight, who is ordered out 
 next spring, and who, with quiet brave indifference, 
 "wouldn't mind if it was to-morrow," is evidently 
 ready at all risks, and under all circumstances, to 
 do his duty, and to call the highest heroism simple 
 "duty," nothing more? Now, can you and I, my 
 cheery stay-at-home friend, imagine him lying in 
 the cold, with his stalwart limbs shot off, and his 
 bold brown face stark and white ; or huddled under 
 a flapping tent, with the snow beating in on his 
 helplessness ; or languishing weeks and months on 
 
108 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 a hospital bed, and rising only if he ever does rise 
 an invalid for life ? 
 
 No, my good friend, we can not realize these 
 things ; we can only, when needed, put our hand 
 into our purse, as I dare say you would to the ut- 
 most of your honest capability, and try to abate 
 any suffering we know of; above all, to help on, 
 each by his small power making in the aggre- 
 gate the power which rules the universe, Love 
 that time when the " nations shall not make war 
 any more." 
 
 So good-by, my jolly agriculturist; may you 
 give your plowmen wages enough to keep body 
 and soul together, so that they need not take to 
 poaching first, and to the ale-house and "listing" 
 afterward. And good-by, my steady recruiting of- 
 ficer ; would that, for your sake, our army w r ere so 
 nobly democratic that every private had it in his 
 own power to become a general : your good, hand- 
 some face will often stop me in future philippics 
 against soldiers. 
 
 Good-by, for I descend at this little country sta- 
 tion, and am ready to vanish into the dark; and, 
 ere the train glides off, like a long, sinuous black 
 serpent, with three eyes in its tail, I hear the little 
 news-boy running from carriage to carriage, with 
 his fan of papers extended, shouting out in his 
 small voice, 
 
 "To-day's Herald second 'dition ! Last news 
 o' the war!" 
 
WAR-SPARKLES. 109 
 
 The war the war! And I am driving down 
 peaceful country lanes, between feathery, white fo 
 liaged trees, and deep, silent snow-drifts, shone on 
 by moonlight and stars ! 
 
110 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 Ur SoRuer'0 (Coming fijome. 
 
 THEY are very quiet people, my Somersetshire 
 cousins. Sight-seeing is altogether out of their 
 element. Some of them never beheld London in 
 all their lives, and have as much conception of it 
 as they have of the Tower of Babel. Of a London 
 crowd they have no more notion than a Hindoo- 
 stance has of the icebergs in the Northwest Passage. 
 When I talked to them of the strangely solemn 
 pageant perhaps the strangest and solemnest that 
 London streets will witness for many a century 
 the Wellington funeral, they listened with uncom- 
 prehending wonder, and thought "it must have 
 been odd to see so many people together." Of 
 that multitudinous surging human sea the grand- 
 est part of any metropolitan sight they heard 
 with the shrinking which most English country 
 gentlewomen feel at the idea of " the mob." 
 
 Therefore it was not surprising that when we 
 heard of the "show" at Bristol, its funereal splen- 
 dors were not attractive. We determined to be 
 among the few who did not rush to see the Caradoc 
 come into harbor, and the landing of that poor 
 worn, aged body, which, perhaps, had better have 
 
AN OLD SOLDIER'S COMING HOME. Ill 
 
 been left where the septuagenarian soldier's heart 
 broke under his too heavy burden; where busy 
 Slander, pointing out the countless graves around 
 him, would have been silent as soon as her foot 
 reached the old man's own. No ; we had or all 
 avouched we had not the slightest wish to see 
 Lord Raglan's sorrowful "coming home." 
 
 It was as we in our isolated ignorance sup- 
 posed the morning after the funeral when we 
 walked to the station, with the intention of "do- 
 ing" Bristol and Clifton in a quiet comfortable 
 way, becoming such very quiet middle-aged gentle- 
 women, to whom the shortest railway journey was 
 an event of importance. 
 
 "Let me take the tickets, pray." For I had a 
 notion that my little cousin, Miss Patience, would 
 be completely annihilated by the crowd I saw 
 gathering, or else that she would commit some 
 egregrious blunder in the matter of tickets, and 
 allow us the pleasure of traveling to Bristol for a 
 London fare. So I rushed valorously into the 
 throng that seemed thickening momently behind 
 me. Surely, surely yes ! too late we saw the fa- 
 tal announcement, exhibited in black-edged formal- 
 ity on the office wall, that this day trains would 
 start to see the funeral of Lord Raglan. 
 
 We had made a great mistake ; but the tickets 
 were taken, and it required all one's powers, men- 
 tal and physical, to edge a safe way out of that hot, 
 
112 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 smothery, scrambling, shouting, fighting throng, to 
 which one only one ! helpless and miserable of- 
 ficial was dispensing advice, entreaties, and tickets 
 the last in very small proportion to the two for- 
 mer. I owed mine solely to the burly protecting 
 shoulder and bluff benevolent voice of a big Som- 
 ersetshire lad; thence being piteously jostled and 
 crushed till I sheltered behind a sickly, grim, elder- 
 ly Indian officer. 
 
 "Can't you find your party aw! Better ask 
 the policeman; one always requires a policeman 
 among the lower classes." 
 
 "Yes," added a lively young matron. "I'm 
 sure I had no idea of the crowd till the policeman 
 told me to take care of my little boy. I declare I 
 had quite forgotten the child." 
 
 An odd mother, I thought ; but then she was so 
 fashionable ! 
 
 Here the crowd grew more nebulous, and at 
 length I slowly emerged therefrom, to be met on 
 the platform almost as eagerly and pathetically as 
 Dante would have met a friendly ghost escaped 
 out of purgatory. 
 
 " Of course, Cousin Patience, you'll not think of 
 going to-day?" said I. 
 
 But Miss Patience hesitated; and there was a 
 curious twinkle in her brown eyes such brilliant 
 eyes! if only she would not hide them under that 
 dreadful blue veil and green bonnet. There cer- 
 
AN OLD SOLDIER'S COMING HOME. 113 
 
 tainly is in the human mind an inherent efferves- 
 cence, which, however corked and sealed, when 
 brought into contact with the wholesome natural 
 air has an irresistible tendency to froth over. And 
 why not, Miss Patience? Who made your bright 
 eyes, your merry laugh, and your gay heart, that 
 instinctively responds to all innocent pleasures? 
 Bender tribute to whom tribute is due. Don't 
 look so shamefaced and doubtful, as if you were 
 afraid you were sinning much in gently hinting, 
 
 " We do not very often have a holiday." 
 
 Upon which, though I firmly believed, from the 
 signs of the gathering multitude, that these two ami- 
 able and simple gentlewomen would come home, 
 as the children say, "all in little pieces," of course 
 I hesitated no longer. If we could but get safe 
 into some carriage! and for the Bristol show we 
 must only trust to fortune. 
 
 Fortune favors the helpless as well as the brave. 
 After a few well-escaped chances such as my 
 Cousin Patience's being thrust next to a sweep and 
 his bag, and my Cousin Faith's being invited to the 
 knee of an ancient farmer we got secure, and, as 
 we rejoiced to know, " thoroughly respectable" 
 seats near a grieved old lady, who, in the scramble, 
 had paid double fare, and offered her return-ticket 
 generously to the company round. 
 
 " Gi'e un to I," issued from the mouth of a large, 
 handsome, well-dressed young fellow, who seemed 
 
ill STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 to have cultivated with the utmost success his farm, 
 his flesh, his muscle, and his whiskers every thing, 
 in short, except his education. But when his sweet- 
 heart, blushing under a most wonderful pink bon- 
 net, mildly ejaculated, "La, Joe!" and explained, 
 in a smothered Devon accent, that the difference of 
 fare might be applied for, and be returned at Bris- 
 tol, Mr. Joe, with a wide-mouthed merry "Haw- 
 haw!" relapsed into a conversation with a mascu- 
 line neighbor on, I believe, turnips. 
 
 We started. 
 
 " Thirty -five minutes behind time," said a quiet 
 young man in the gray plaid costume of a gentle- 
 man pedestrian or walking tourist. "I hope no 
 accident will happen to us." 
 
 Faith and Patience gave a little shudder, but 
 still sat, worthy their names. On we sped till we 
 lost sight of that fair white city, which, like a lazy 
 beauty, not quite so young as she has been, drowses 
 in sunny aristocratic calm in her nest at the valley 
 foot, or climbs languidly, house by house, up the 
 circle of the neighboring hills. Very green those 
 hills were green as the slopes of Paradise; and 
 now and then, through the meadows below, appear- 
 ed glimpses of the any thing but " silver" Avon, 
 crawling on to its acme of muddiness in ancient 
 Bristol. 
 
 "What a scene of confusion Bristol will be to- 
 day! I hope we shall come to no harm in the 
 
AN OLD SOLDIER'S COMING HOME. 115 
 
 crowd ;" and very painful suggestions of our posi- 
 tion as " unprotected females 7 ' were forced upon our 
 minds, as, through carriage partitions, we listened 
 to the loud talk of the holiday-people, to whom the 
 poor old man's death had at least given one day of 
 harmless festival. 
 
 "Sir," asked Miss Faith, demurely, after a glance 
 exchanged with Patience and me, and a second, 
 very penetrating, at the young gentleman her neigh- 
 bor, " can you tell us how best to escape the proces- 
 sion to-day ?" 
 
 " Escape the procession?" with a doubt if he had 
 heard aright, and then a srnile of considerable en- 
 tertainment. "Yes, ma'am, I think you might es- 
 cape all all the amusements going, by taking back 
 streets, such as " He mentioned several. 
 
 "Thank you. I believe the procession was to 
 start from Princes Street." 
 
 "Was it? Oh, thank you, madam. That will 
 just suit me;" and, apparently mirthfully conscious 
 that some people were not quite so foolish as some 
 other people, he leaned back, and pulled his brown 
 hat over his laughing eyes. Patience's own again 
 danced unlawfully. 
 
 " Don't you think, sister not that I particularly 
 wish it but if, without crowding or inconvenience, 
 we could see just a very little? 'Tis quite a national 
 sight one we might like to remember afterward." 
 
 "Perhaps!" said Faith, hesitatingly. "At all 
 
116 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 events, we needn't exactly go out of our way to 
 avoid the show. As for the crowd, for my part " 
 
 Evidently the case was settled. I, who knew 
 what a crowd was, only hoped I might have the 
 consolation of bringing my innocent cousins home 
 alive. 
 
 'The train threw us out amid its hundreds, and I 
 found myself trotting after my companions down 
 the queer streets of Bristol. 
 
 I take a great delight in the first plunge into any 
 strange place, especially any strange town. It is a 
 sensation peculiar of its kind, exquisitely vivid and 
 agreeable one which, in its individual charm, in- 
 voluntarily seems a foretaste of that state of being 
 which we believe we shall attain to when to the 
 astonished spirit "all things" will "become new." 
 The first sight of a strange region always remains 
 to my mental eye a real picture, perfect in itself, 
 distinct from any succession of after-pictures which 
 familiarity may create out of it. It would be a cu- 
 rious psychological process accurately to trace and 
 note the gradual changes which a series of impres- 
 sions invariably produce in a place or person, until ( 
 the first impression is altogether obliterated, or re- 
 mains, as I say, like a picture only. 
 
 Therefore I shall always see Bristol as I saw it 
 on that gray July day, when every shop was shut 
 up in Sunday quietness, and the occasional toll 
 of a muffled bell gave a Sunday-like atmosphere. 
 
AN OLD SOLDIER'S COMING HOME. 117 
 
 Only it was no church-going groups that rolled 
 along in such jaunty mirth, intersecting the foot- 
 path in long lines, generally linked all together 
 arm-in-arm sometimes a country youth, with a 
 Blouselinda, in her very best shawl and bonnet, on 
 either side; sometimes a laborer, his wife, and a 
 string of small children. A great number seemed 
 to have come in carts. I saw one evidently bivou- 
 acked for the day, the mother sitting on the front 
 seat, knife in hand, and on her lap a gigantic loaf, 
 from which she was cutting such "lommocks" of 
 bread that one ceased to wonder at the very jolly 
 appearance of these specimens of West of England 
 rurality. As for their speech and it was tolerably 
 loud and plentiful I found it quite unintelligible. 
 I would as soon attempt to understand, or be under- 
 stood, in a parley with the ghosts of our Saxon an- 
 cestors, as with their agricultural descendants of 
 Wilts, Devon, and Somerset. 
 
 Some peculiarities were noticeable in these pro- 
 vincial sight-seers as distinguished from a London 
 crowd. There was a far slenderer sprinkling of 
 what we are used to call the " middle classes ;" noth- 
 ing was abroad on foot but honest downright labor, 
 bent on gratifying its curiosity in a solemn, resolute 
 English way. Yery few jokes were scattered about ; 
 your Hodge and Dolly are rarely quick-witted, at 
 least not till the ale goes round ; but every where 
 was a grave circumfluence of buzzing expectation, 
 
118 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 which gave the effect of absolute silence. No scram- 
 bling or fighting for the best points of view, even 
 if Hodge were sharp enough to discover them : he 
 seemed too much unused to his position to grow 
 obstreperous, and contented himself with wander- 
 ing along by Dolly's side, or planting himself at in- 
 tervals to stare about him, with an open-mouthed 
 quiet stupidity which served him and his neigh- 
 bors in the stead of a dozen policemen. 
 
 As for that invariable and most obnoxious ele- 
 ment in a London mob lazy, lounging, pseudo- 
 gentilit} r , sinking through various phases down to 
 tattered, sharp-witted, shameless vice it was here 
 wholly absent; so likewise was the gamin race, 
 with all its riot, mischief, and drollery. I never 
 heard a single attempt at that small, impertinent, 
 yet often exceedingly pertinent humor, which is the 
 delight of a Cockney crowd, and the very stock in 
 trade of a Cockney boy ; and for pickpockets and 
 the like, why, we might have safely walked, purse 
 in hand, along the whole thronged line of road 
 which faced the quay. Nevertheless, with all its 
 lack of sharpness, such intent, determined sight-see- 
 ing I never beheld as in this honest West of En- 
 gland mob. 
 
 We had passed St. Mary Eedclyffe that grand 
 old church staying scarcely a minute to admire 
 what is perhaps the finest exterior ornamentation 
 of any parish church in England. And all along 
 
AN OLD SOLDIER'S COMING HOME. 119 
 
 our route we were followed by the muffled clang 
 of its deep musical bell, that sounded, among the 
 weak tellings of the other churches, like some rich 
 ear-satisfying contralto among a dozen feeble, soul- 
 less sopranos. Shortly entering a higher road, 
 where a crowd, a good number deep, lined the rail- 
 ings on the farther side, we came out upon a broad 
 arch of sky, with a landscape half country, half 
 town in the distance, and close underneath what 
 must be the Avon, for masts and shipping were vis- 
 ible at least the tops of them. On the opposite 
 side of the gorge, which, we concluded, held the 
 river in its depth, was a tall warehouse and a quay, 
 and thereon a black reception tent, decked with un- 
 dertakers 7 plumes. 
 
 Ay, if we could see any thing, it would be here. 
 u Let us go to the bridge; I used to know the 
 bridge-keeper," said my Cousin Patience. 
 
 And, delighted at the idea of even one problem- 
 atical friend in our crowded desolation, we threaded 
 our way on, eager to attack the bridge-keeper. 
 
 Alas! he was gone, and another reigned in his 
 stead a bridge-keeper who knew not Patience ! 
 
 "Can't pass, ladies; bridge closed for the next 
 three hours." 
 
 Patience who with humble folk has the most 
 winning way I ever knew "put the comether" of 
 her eyes and smile remorselessly on him, but in 
 vain. 
 
120 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 " Can't let you in, miss; 'twould be as much as 
 my head was worth." 
 
 " But, my man, where can we go ?" 
 
 "Beally, I don't know, miss, or I'd say. Where 
 them folk stand is the best, but they be standing 
 ever since the bridge was open. The wharf, now 
 
 "Ay, the ship-building wharf a capital place, 
 if we could only get admission." 
 
 "Ladies" and a decent young woman, with a 
 child in her arms, came courtesying up "us do 
 let 7 un through our cottage on to th' warf for a 
 penny. Won ye come ?" 
 
 " A penny ! It's the cheapest sight-seeing that 
 ever I knew or heard of," said I, as we followed our 
 new friend into a shipwright's yard directly oppo- 
 site " the show." There, armed with three chairs, 
 and just glancing round and discovering that we 
 formed part of a decent gathering of working-peo- 
 ple, we settled contentedly under shelter of a great 
 lilac-tree that stretched out of the cottage garden. 
 
 A curiously quiet spot, even though all around 
 were small congregations of laborers and their fam- 
 ilies, of every age the babies held up in arms, the 
 elders seated or standing. One old, old woman was 
 propped on chairs, and sat there, half stupefied, as if 
 she had not felt the out-of-door air for years ; some- 
 times looking about her, nodding her head, and 
 smiling foolishly. Now and then arose an outcry 
 of mothers, whose brats, with the usual duck-like 
 
AN OLD SOLDIER'S COMING HOME. 121 
 
 propensity, would insist on waddling down to where 
 the water kindly shallowed to the edge of the wharf, 
 whence, doubtless, many a good ship had been 
 launched. Otherwise the place was wonderfully 
 still no crowding, no pushing. We just sat at 
 our ease, and contemplated the scene, which was 
 divided from us by what Bristolians politely, but 
 somewhat imaginatively, call "the river." In the 
 foreground, a slow, leaden-colored stream, rather 
 canal -like and narrow. On it, close inshore, lay a 
 beautiful yacht, the owners lounging about in the 
 various picturesque costumes and attitudes that 
 gentlemen sailors indulge in. Opposite, near the 
 landing-quay, was a large, gayly-dressed ship, the 
 Morning Star, her decks thronged with ladies. The 
 quay itself was sprinkled with moving groups, va- 
 rious in color black, white, and red. Beyond, in 
 a square rampart, was a mass entirely red the 
 motionless lines of horse-guards ; and beyond that 
 again, the long vista of Princes Street, down each 
 side of which were windows, balconies, platforms 
 alive with heads, while above them innumerable 
 flags made two waving lines of bright color, van- 
 ishing into dim perspective. On the left hand the 
 river wore the same gaudy festival air, for every 
 ship was dressed all over with colors half-mast high. * 
 and in many parts long "strings" of flags were sus- 
 pended from some mast to some wharf-window on 
 shore. It might have been a triumph or a festival 
 F 
 
122 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 but for the extraordinary quietness of the multitude, 
 and the strange effect of the incessant minute-guns 
 and tolling of the church-bells. 
 
 " How thick they stand on Brandon Hill !" said 
 Faith ; and truly the people there were clustering 
 like a living wall. Above, the white houses of 
 Clifton came out sharply against the clear sky, 
 while, gradually sloping downward, habitations 
 thickened and thickened, till it became the good 
 old smoky city of Bristol, between which, right 
 and left, the grimy Avon flows. 
 
 Hark! a louder gun, and a stirring among the 
 black gowns, and white liveries, and red uniforms 
 scattered over the quay. They conglomerate in a 
 formal cluster. The black, white, and gray crowd 
 on the decks of the Morning Star becomes extra 
 lively, then steadies into expectation. Somehow, 
 from this and from some vague murmurs about us, 
 we learn that " she's coming." Only the ship with 
 its lifeless freight. Poor old man ! England can 
 not say that "he is coming!" No bursting of 
 cheers no striking up of the known English tune, 
 welcome to many a " conquering hero." There is 
 a silent pressing forward of the crowd on shore, 
 and the young owner of the yacht alongside mounts 
 the poop for a better view, looks down the river a 
 minute or two, then takes off his cap, and stands 
 with his black curls bared motionless ; for, glid- 
 ing up the centre of the river, her busy paddle- 
 
AN OLD SOLDIER'S COMING HOME. 123 
 
 wheels turning slowly, slowly, in a strange, funereal 
 motion, that suited well her black hull and black 
 masts, comes the little steamer Star, which brought 
 from the Caradoc, and is about to land on his native 
 shore the body. 
 
 Nothing but that! Nothing left, after Alma, 
 Balaklava, Inkermann after the summer's marches 
 and the winter's siege after months and months 
 of hardship, danger, and anxiety, chronicled by 
 those honest, simple, soldier-like dispatches, which 
 England used to read, week after week, with a true 
 English pride in " our general" nothing but that 
 which you see under a small black canopy on the 
 after deck, ranged round which, in a ring of scarlet, 
 the mourners stand. 
 
 She steams slowly up, the little vessel that looks 
 so like a bier ; on either side of her follow two 
 long, long lines of boats, the rowers all in white 
 shirt-sleeves, black neckcloths, and a black band 
 round the left arm, dropping regular noiseless oars. 
 Now she comes nearer ; you can distinctly trace on 
 the deck a black outline of the shape familiar 
 enough to us all. Her steam still slackens; the 
 boats slip out of the line of procession, and gather 
 round her. The moving groups collect in a mass 
 on the edge of the quay ; you may see the clergy- 
 men's fluttering surplices, the corporation's gaudy 
 gowns, and the gray or bald head of more than one 
 old soldier standing perfectly still. Gradually ev- 
 
124 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 ery head is uncovered ; the oars are simultaneously 
 lifted a rising forest and held aloft in salutation. 
 But all is silence except the occasional toll from St. 
 Mary Kedclyffe tower, the boom of a minute-gun, 
 and the faint splash of the steamer's paddles. Now 
 they stop ; she is close inshore ; those waiting for 
 her go at once on deck. 
 
 Ay, the old soldier has come home. 
 
 That return home of a hero unvictorious, a com- 
 mander not unblamed a general who died worn 
 out after a great error and check history will re- 
 member as one of her saddest and most touching 
 chronicles. "Where were all the honest fault-find- 
 ings and the malicious slanders, which he bore alike 
 in such mute courage where were they now ? 
 
 " An old man 
 
 Is come to lay his weary bones among you : 
 Give him a little earth, for charity." 
 
 As the body was landed, one clear, prolonged 
 melancholy bugle-note came from over the water, 
 piercing, almost like the cry of a woman; then a 
 nodding of undertakers 7 plumes, and a moving of 
 black velvet housings, as passed slowly along the 
 quay the last carriage in which we all shall safely 
 ride. It was no funeral car a simple hearse, with 
 a few mourning coaches following. The troop of 
 horse-guards closed in behind, and then up the 
 thronged, hushed, gaudy avenue of Princes Street 
 the procession went, melting away into a dim mass, 
 
AN OLD SOLDIER'S COMING HOME. 125 
 
 out of which came, at intervals, in shrill fife-tones, 
 the monotonous, continually repeated notes of the 
 Dead March in Saul, the saddest and yet sweetest 
 funeral tune that ever was written. 
 
 And so they carried the old soldier home, and 
 gathered him to his fathers. 
 
 " Patience," said I, when, after a pause so long 
 that our neighbor sight-seers began to move away, 
 and the yard was becoming cleared, we still stood 
 on our three chairs, gazing over the river in the di- 
 rection of Princes Street " well, Patience?" 
 
 She had pulled down the blue veil, and Faith 
 was busy hiding away her pocket-handkerchief. 
 We walked silently along the river-side toward 
 Clifton. 
 
126 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 |)eople'0 
 
 SHE stopped to coax out of the gutter a small 
 dirty urchin, struggling along with a still smaller 
 and dirtier urchin in its arms. She certainly has 
 the kindest and motherliest heart in the world, this 
 matron friend of mine. " Oh," she said, as we trav- 
 ersed the muggy and muddy London street, paus- 
 ing often, for she was attracted by every form of 
 infantile tribulation, "oh, what a life they lead, 
 poor people's children ! If we could only carry 
 out the plan I was talking of, and set up in every 
 parish of every large town a public nursery." 
 
 Now the question of public nurseries happened 
 to be the one uppermost in her benevolence at 
 present, and I was going with her to see an estab- 
 lishment of the kind. It interested me as being 
 one of the few charitable " notions" which strike at 
 the root of an evil, instead of lopping off a few of 
 its topmost branches ; for certainly, looking at the 
 swarm of children one meets in such a walk as this, 
 and speculating on the homes they spring up in, 
 and the dangers they hourly eucounter, it is won- 
 derful how they contrive to struggle up, even to 
 that early phase of infantile life when the children 
 
POOR PEOPLE'S CHILDREN. 127 
 
 of the London poor appear on the surface of society 
 society which, from their very birth, seems set 
 against them. 
 
 "Poor little wretches! How can they ever 
 grow up to be men and women?" 
 
 " Probably not one fourth of them do, 97 said 
 
 Mrs. , whom I will call, after the good old 
 
 Baxterian fashion, Mrs. Readyhand. "In Man- 
 chester, not one half of the children born survive 
 to their second year. Think of all which that fact 
 implies of the multitude of tender lives fading 
 out in suffering ; the array of little coffins and tiny 
 graves. And the mothers one knows not which 
 to pity most ; the ever-recurring pang of the loss 
 of a child, or the gradual callousness which ceases 
 to feel such a loss at all." 
 
 "What a percentage of deaths! and in the first 
 year !" 
 
 " Of course, larger in the first than any succeed- 
 ing. You do not know what it is to rear a young 
 baby ; the constant attention required the infin- 
 itesimally small ills which are death to the tender 
 thing, and which motherly care, and that only, can 
 or will avert. Why, when I have left my babies 
 snug in their warm nursery, and gone down to 
 speak to our charwoman, and seen her sitting in 
 the wash-house suckling a poor little wizzened 
 creature, fretful with pain or drowsy with drug- 
 ging, while standing by was the small seven-year- 
 
128 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 old nurs?, or the worse nurse still, some dirty, 
 drunken old crone, who was paid a few pence for 
 keeping the infant, and bringing it to its mother for 
 one natural meal in the day my dear, when I have 
 seen all this, I have wondered that all the mothers 
 in England well-to-do mothers, who can afford the 
 leisure and luxury of saving their children's lives 
 do not rise up, and try to establish in every town 
 where the women have to go out to work " 
 
 " Public nurseries ?" 
 
 " Exactly," said Mrs. Eeadyhand. She proceed- 
 ed to inform me of a plan she had for the benefit 
 of our particular district of the metropolis a plan 
 that would require at least a twenty-four matron- 
 power in its working out, the onus of which work- 
 ing out lay, and would lie apparently, on her own 
 single pair of already well-filled hands. 
 
 I felt a certain involuntary blush at the little / 
 did I and the rest of us who have to use our pens 
 instead of our hands in daily bread-winning for 
 the helping of what pulpit eloquence would call 
 "our poorer brethren" or sisters; especially those 
 our sisters whom we sometimes shrink from ac- 
 knowledging as such hard-handed, stupid-headed, 
 dull-hearted living from infancy a life so coarse 
 and rude that womanly instincts become blunted, 
 womanly affections deadened; till the creature 
 sinks down to an almost brutal level, the mere 
 drudging, suffering, child-bearing feminine of man. 
 
POOR PEOPLE'S CHILDREN; 129 
 
 Child-bearing ! ay, that is what makes the ineffable 
 sadness of the case. What hope is there for the 
 children of such mothers mothers whom nothing 
 can exempt from the daily duty of earning daily 
 bread? mothers who have to toil in factories; to 
 stand all day at washing-tubs ; to go out charring, 
 or nursing, or slop-working, or any of the nameless 
 out-door avocations by which women in great 
 towns contrive to keep their families a degree 
 above starvation ; families whom no Malthusian 
 laws can hinder from following the higher natural 
 law: "Increase, and multiply, and replenish the 
 earth." 
 
 Eeplenish the earth! With what? With lives 
 so frail that their necessary and swift decadence is 
 to death. Or, escaping that passing safely by the 
 pitfalls that lie in wait for their poor little tottering 
 feet every day of every week, every hour of every 
 day what do we gain ? A puny, weak, unhealthy, 
 deteriorated race a race of which common sense 
 and common feeling are oftentimes fain to believe 
 that it would have been easier for itself and its suc- 
 cessors had it laid its baby bones among the hund- 
 reds more that pile our church-yards with tiny 
 mounds long since forgotten; for it is only the 
 "upper classes" who can afford to grieve and to re- 
 member. 
 
 We went on our way. It was a bright winter 
 noon. Our "district" happened to be in the par- 
 F2 
 
130 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 oxysms of an election more virulently contested 
 than is frequent in the busy metropolis. There 
 was a polling-booth in our High Street, and all our 
 usually quiet semi-suburban streets were frescoed 
 with posters equally laudatory and vituperative, 
 while dashing violently past, or standing lazily at 
 public houses, were partisan cabs, well pasted over, 
 so as to constitute at any other than election-time a 
 series of locomotive libels. All our grown-up 
 world was in a state of convulsion as to whether 
 the noble churchman or ignoble Quaker, the peer 
 or the tradesman, should represent us in Parlia- 
 ment: it seemed quite ridiculous that my friend 
 and I should be devoting our attention to such a 
 very small subject as poor people's babies. 
 
 "I suppose the election will be decided by the 
 time we return,-' said Mrs. Readyhand. " I think, 
 if we start our nursery, I shall be inclined to beg 
 something from the successful candidate for my 
 poor little babies." 
 
 "But I thought the nurseries were self-support- 
 ing?" 
 
 " Partially so. In fact, they ought to be entirely, 
 if there were a sufficient number of children taken 
 in ; though I believe the Paris l creches/ from which 
 these two or three nurseries that we have in Lon- 
 don are modeled, were altogether commenced as 
 charities." 
 
 " Who first started the idea of creches?" 
 
POOR PEOPLE'S CHILDREN. 181 
 
 "One M. Marbeau, so far back as 1844. Being 
 appointed to investigate the Paris i asylums' (which 
 are equivalent to our Infant Schools), and where 
 the working-mothers are in the habit of leaving for 
 the day their children from two years old and up- 
 ward the simple question struck him, What be- 
 comes of the said children until they have reached 
 the prescribed two years? And, on inquirj^, he 
 found the same course pursued, with the same ter- 
 rible results, that we find in every large factory- 
 town the inevitable separation of mother and in- 
 fant during working -hours; the employment of 
 ignorant and brutal nurses at some trifle per day ; 
 and the enormous rate of infant mortality." 
 
 "Of course, the child's best and only nurse is its 
 mother. The mother, during her years of child- 
 bearing and child-rearing, ought not to labor out of 
 her own home." 
 
 " My dear," said Mrs. Eeadyhand, with her soft, 
 kind smile, " how many l ought nets' shall we find 
 in the present condition of society stumbling- 
 blocks that we can not apparently, by any human 
 possibility, overleap or remove? Our only chance 
 is to creep round them. This is just what M. Mar- 
 beau did. Granting what we must grant, I fear, 
 at least for many years to come that the separa- 
 tion of the working-mother and her child is abso- 
 lutely inevitable, the next best thing to be done is 
 to render that separation as little harmful as possi- 
 
132 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 ble. To this end, it is clear that far safer than the 
 care of ill-paid, ignorant, accidental nurses would 
 be a public institution, on the plan of the asylums, 
 open to inspection and direction from the better-in- 
 formed class, having all the advantages and cheap- 
 ness of combination. And so M. Marbeau con- 
 ceived the idea of a creche." 
 
 " And started it?" 
 
 " Yes. At Chaillot first one of the worst Paris- 
 ian suburbs; fitting up a room in the commonest 
 way with a few cradles and chairs; choosing for 
 nurses two poor women out of work, who were to 
 be paid some small sum I believe about twopence 
 a day by the mothers, all the other expenses be- 
 ing defrayed by charity." 
 
 "The plan answered?" 
 
 11 Excellently. Within two years there were nine 
 creches flourishing in the poorest quarters of Paris. 
 This was 1846 ; since then they have still multi- 
 plied, their influence and opportunities of good in- 
 creasing in the same ratio. From a single room 
 they have advanced to kitchens, wash-houses, work- 
 rooms, gardens, and even to the distribution of 
 soups, porridge, etc., to the poor mothers when, at 
 stated times generally twice a day they come to 
 suckle their children." 
 
 " And for how many hours are the little crea- 
 tures left there?" 
 
 " From 6 A.M. to 8 P.M., the regular work-hours 
 
POOR PEOPLE'S CHILDREN. 133 
 
 of Paris a long day, is it not ? But, to show that 
 this absence does not weaken the motherly love 
 very unlikely it could I have heard it noted that 
 on Sundays and holidays such a thing is hardly 
 known as a baby being left at the cr&che." 
 
 "Poor mothers! how they must enjoy a day's 
 nursing!" 
 
 " Yes; and of a healthy, merry brat, who has 
 been all the week well-warmed, well-washed, well- 
 tended, and well-fed, instead of fretting and puling 
 in filth, cold, and neglect, or lying stupid and sickly, 
 dosed to death with sleeping powders. My dear," 
 added Mrs. Eeadyhand, after pausing once again 
 to allay about the tenth case of infant woe which 
 had caught her eyes or ears along these wretched 
 streets in which we were now penetrating, " my 
 dear, let political economists and philanthropists 
 work away as much as they like among the labor- 
 ing or non-laboring classes there is room enough 
 for us all. But, for my part, I do wish something 
 could be done for the little ones the helpless, 
 harmless creatures in whom lies the future of the 
 community." 
 
 There was great truth in what she said. Some- 
 times, God knows, in portions of this generation, 
 vice and misery seem so ingrafted, that one gets 
 hopeless of cure on this side death, and can only 
 give back the corrupted race into His hands, believ- 
 ing in His final healing. But with the new gener- 
 
134 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 ation there is always hope. Mrs. Eeadyhand was 
 not far wrong when she inclined to begin at the 
 root of things to take care of the babies. 
 
 "But you did not tell me," I said, "how and 
 when the notion of the Parisian creches was repro- 
 duced here in London?" 
 
 "Only in three or four instances, and that of 
 late years, and by the exertions of private individ- 
 uals. One lady kept hers afloat solely at her own 
 expense for months, and went to inspect it daily ; 
 another, a clergyman's wife, did the same. The 
 nursery we are going to visit to-day is attached to 
 a Eagged School and a Dissenting chapel. But 
 these, not being known publicly enough for self- 
 support, and dependent only on the charity of their 
 originators, have not prospered like the creches of 
 our neighbors. I think," she added, "that the 
 cause of failure, if failure has been, is, that the ques- 
 tion has been made too much that of sect instead 
 of wide Christian benevolence, which it ought to 
 be, you know." 
 
 " Certainly. Half a dozen conflicting creeds 
 could not do much harm to a little sucking-baby." 
 
 " Still, my dear, we must take things as they are, 
 and try to improve them." 
 
 Here she stopped, for we had talked ourselves 
 out of the bearings of our course, and got into a 
 labyrinth of poor and dirty streets. Mrs. Ready- 
 hand made various inquiries for the Public 
 
POOR PEOPLE'S CHILDREN. 135 
 
 Nursery which, however, seemed any thing but 
 public, for it was only with the aid of great patience 
 and a friendly policeman that we lighted upon it 
 at all. 
 
 My friend pointed to the entrance, over which 
 was written, " Public Nursery, Infant Bagged 
 School, and Laundry." 
 
 " What a combination of good things ! Did you 
 never see a Bagged School ? Then we will take a 
 peep in the first. This seems to be the door." 
 
 Which door opening, disclosed a tolerably large 
 and lofty room, rather dark and close it seemed to 
 us, just passing out of the bright frosty air; and I, 
 unused to schools, was sensible of a great oppres- 
 sion and confusion of little tongues, and an inces- 
 sant commotion of little bodies, which only partially 
 subsided when the mistress, blowing a warning- 
 whistle her voice would have been utterly useless 
 dispatched them to a raised succession of bench- 
 es, and came forward to speak to the visitors. 
 
 She was a decent, kindly -looking soul, with a 
 care-worn, intelligent face, the mouth and chin of 
 which indicated both the power and the habit of 
 ruling even a Bagged School. 
 
 An Infant Bagged School ! What pictures the 
 name implies ! pictures of the very scum of baby- 
 hood, picked out of gutters, alleys, reeking cellars ; 
 wretched babyhood, from its very birth-hour enter- 
 ing on its only inheritance want, brutality, and 
 crime. 
 
136 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 Yet here were goodly rows of small plants of liu 
 manity, ranged, height above height, in the usual 
 fashion peculiar to Infant Schools and green-houses 
 tidy, clean, unragged children wan and sharp- 
 visaged, to be sure, but one finds that look in every 
 poor London child. Nevertheless, these were a de- 
 cent array, sprinkled with two or three faces bright 
 and pretty enough for any rank or class of tiny 
 girlhood. There might have been boys likewise ; 
 but sex was quite undistinguishable. 
 
 At the opposite end, near the fire fenced in a 
 safe corner by a semicircle of forms, and guarded 
 by one or two elder girls was a den of much 
 smaller fry, some not more than eight-months-old 
 infants, squatting, or crawling, or sitting bolt up- 
 right against the wall, staring right before them 
 with an air of solemn interest. 
 
 " These are very little scholars," said Mrs. Eeady- 
 hand, smiling, and taking up one in her arms. 
 
 u Bless you, ma'am, they do no harm ! They are 
 as quiet as mice, and as good as gold. The elder 
 ones bring them, and look after them ; it's a great 
 relief to the mothers to have them safe here." 
 
 "But would they not be better in the nursery 
 up stairs ?" 
 
 " Why, you see, I let them in free, and up stairs 
 they would have to pay ; and fourpence a day is a 
 great deal to some folk. Besides 
 
 Here the schoolmistress hesitated, and looked as 
 
POOR PEOPLE'S CHILDREN. 137 
 
 if she could say a little more, if she would, concern- 
 ing "up stairs." 
 
 "But you think, were it not for the payment, 
 working mothers would take advantage of the nurs- 
 ery?" ' 
 
 "Maybe yes, I know they would. They must 
 get the children out of the way son.ehow. But 
 poor people don't easily fall into new plans ; and, 
 besides, they take things rather coolly up stairs. 
 They don't do as I do with my scholars hunt 
 them out of lanes, and courts, and alleys, and make 
 them come to school." 
 
 " Ay, that is the secret." And I fancy my friend 
 and I both thought of the words, " Go forth into 
 the highways and hedges, and compel them to come 
 in." 
 
 We had some more talk with the very sensible 
 schoolmistress, who exhibited her charge with no 
 small pride, especially one evidently her favorite 
 a well-grown girl of eleven or twelve, neat, fair- 
 faced, with the brightest, most intelligent blue eyes. 
 
 " She is deaf and dumb, ladies. When she came 
 she knew nothing, and could not make a sound. 
 Now she is monitress, and can teach a class its let- 
 ters." 
 
 How this was managed I could not understand ; 
 but the sweet-faced deaf mute was as busy as pos- 
 sible, wand in hand, in the centre of a circle of 
 small elves, who were making frantic struggles 
 
138 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 after the acquirement of a large pasteboard alpha- 
 bet. And admirably she marshaled, round and 
 round the room, the general vocal procession that 
 followed, in which wonderful performance the deaf 
 little maid, I thought, was the most enviable of the 
 company. 
 
 There was another small damsel whom I could 
 not help noticing brown-skinned, dark-eyed, slen- 
 der-limbed of painfully precocious beauty and in- 
 telligence, the sort of creature to hang bangles on, 
 and make an Indian princess of; or the kind of elf 
 who, you might feel sure, appeared of nights out of 
 a gigantic convolvulus or a mammoth rose, under 
 the admirably arranged moonlight of Messrs. Grieve 
 and Telbin, in a Hay market extravaganza. 
 
 "To this complexion she must come at last!" 
 thought I, watching the agile grace of her descent 
 from the semicircle, the glitter of some foreign-look- 
 ing armlet on her delicate brown arm, and the evi- 
 dent consciousness of that, and of her own extreme 
 prettiness, with which the poor child joined the 
 troop of her companions a troop that irresistibly 
 inclined one to parody Eobert Browning's " great- 
 hearted gentlemen" as it went 
 
 * ' Marching along, twenty-score strong, 
 Ragged-school children, singing this song" 
 
 a song which was meant to be explanatory of dif- 
 ferent trades, with imitative mechanical accompa- 
 niments, greatly satisfactory to the performers. 
 
POOR PEOPLE'S CHILDREN. 139 
 
 Even the little babes in the den crept on all-fours 
 to its outermost barrier, admiringly clapping small 
 dirty hands. 
 
 No I beg pardon, excellent Eagged School mis- 
 tress they were not dirty. I never saw a cleaner, 
 neater, wholesomer charity-school. When one 
 thought of the horrible London alleys they came 
 out of and went back to, their tidiness was really 
 miraculous. 
 
 " I teach the bigger ones to mend their things," 
 said the mistress when we noticed this ; " and some- 
 times kind ladies send us parcels of old clothes, and 
 we manage to alter and contrive. Generally, the 
 children get decently clothed when they have been 
 at school a little while. Besides, we give them 
 some sort of a dinner, and it is often quite late be- 
 fore we send them home." 
 
 " What homes some of these must be !" 
 
 "Likely enough. But we take all sorts; we 
 ask no questions. You see, when they first come 
 here, they are such little things. Nothing like be- 
 ginning in time." 
 
 "But you don't teach them all day over?" 
 
 "Bless you, no; I only let them amuse them- 
 selves, and keep them out of mischief babies and 
 all." 
 
 " Ah ! that reminds me we must go and see the 
 babies up stairs," said Mrs. Eeadyhand, giving up 
 the chubby boy whom she had had in her arms all 
 
140 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 this while, and who seemed very unwilling to be so 
 relinquished. 
 
 "But would you like to question any of my 
 children first? Here" following my eye, and 
 summoning (I am not sure that if you always do 
 this it will be good for her, Mrs. Schoolmistress) 
 that prettiest and most intelligent brown -faced 
 maiden. She came, accompanied by a smaller and 
 plainer sister, and answered various inquiries man- 
 nerly enough, though with scarcely as many blushes 
 as one likes to see in a child. 
 
 " My name is ; my sister's ." [I could 
 
 not make out either.] " We came from the West 
 Indies. Father was a cook." [Oh, my Indian prin- 
 cess !] " Father is dead. Mother makes soy ; she 
 sells it. She sells soy, and " [Here a long list 
 of sauces, etc., ran glibly off like a shop-advertise- 
 ment.] " That is how we live. We are very poor. 
 Yes, we like coming to school very much. We 
 shall learn to help mother in time." And so on, 
 and so on. 
 
 I am about to inquire and remonstrate concern- 
 ing the shiny bracelet, which looks so odd and out 
 of place in a Eagged School. But, peering into 
 the little girl's face, a certain shyness comes over 
 me, as if I had no business to pull the mote out of 
 the eye of the poor man's child. Besides, she elders 
 it with such tender protection over the little sister ; 
 and there she is, turning to pat, and looking as if 
 
POOR PEOPLE'S CHILDREN.. 141 
 
 she greatly wanted to cuddle, that rolly-polly fel< 
 low, who is stretching out of the babies' den, and 
 clutching at her frock. Who knows, Bagged-School 
 influences may end in her growing up as some kind 
 young mistress's pretty nurse-maid) instead of the 
 gauzy fairy of Haymarket foot-lights, with a future 
 of Heaven knows ! 
 
 But Mrs. Eeadyhand was longing after her public 
 nursery, so we prepared to leave the good school- 
 mistress and her flock, the younger portion of which, 
 my friend again observed, " would be better up 
 stairs." 
 
 " Please don't say so, ma'am," said the mistress, 
 earnestly ; " they do no harm. They are very good 
 little things. Indeed, I couldn't bear to part with 
 my little ones." 
 
 " That is the right sort of woman," said Mrs. 
 Eeadyhand, as we ascended to the nursery. 
 
 It was a large room, scrupulously clean and neat. 
 At the farther end was a row of eight or ten iron 
 swinging-cots, with mattresses and coverings. There 
 was a coal-cellar and linen-closet, a large table, and 
 several chairs some for great, some for little peo- 
 ple. The whole room was in perfect order the 
 boarded floor without stain or dust. The atmos- 
 phere, rigidly sanitary and airy; in fact, rather too 
 airy, for the fire was powerless to warm it beyond 
 its immediate vicinity. There was a decently-car- 
 peted hearth, a chair, a round stand, etc., in which 
 
142 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 snug little encampment, with tier tea-things laid, 
 and her newspaper in her hand, sat the nurse. 
 
 Now, my good nurse, I have no wish to malign 
 you. You were a very decent, respectable, fat, 
 motherly body, with an apron as spotless as your 
 floor, and as smooth as your countenance. 1 have 
 no doubt you know your duty, and do it, too, within 
 its prescribed limits. But how could you sit sipping 
 your tea, and reading your newspaper over your 
 cosy fire, while in the arctic regions beyond out- 
 side the verge of carpeting three blue-nosed, red- 
 fingered little nurse-maids were vainly trying to 
 soothe or to keep in order five or six babies, from 
 the small month-old lump of helplessness to the 
 big, unruly ten-months 7 brat, which is periling its 
 life as every mother knows by various ingenious 
 exploits about once in five minutes all day long. 
 
 " Ladies, pray sit. Our ladies generally come of 
 mornings. I am very glad when they do. I have a 
 hard place here (Betsy, do keep that child off 
 the carpet.) They don't allow me help enough 
 nothing like enough, ma'am. Only these three chits 
 from the Eagged School (Sally, can't you quiet 
 that baby ?) Indeed, ladies, you don't know what 
 it is to look after poor people's children." 
 
 There was a certain truth in this a pitiful truth 
 enough, though she did not put it so. No one, 
 whose sole experience in the baby-line lies among 
 the well-fed, well-clothed, well-tended offspring of 
 
POOR PEOPLE'S CHILDREN. 
 
 the respectable classes, can see without pain the 
 vast difference between them and " poor people's 
 babies" especially the London poor : their pinched 
 faces ; their thin, flaccid limbs, shivering under the 
 smallest possible covering of threadbare flannel and 
 worn-out calico ; their withered, old-like expression, 
 so different from the round-eyed, apple-cheeked 
 simplicity that well-to-do parents love : no wonder 
 it was rather hard to keep in healthy satisfied quiet- 
 ness poor people's babies babies, too, who from 
 morning till night seldom or never know what it is 
 to cuddle in warmly to the natural nest the moth- 
 er's own bosom. Of course, nothing can supply the 
 place of that ; and, of course, it must be a hard po- 
 sition, my respectable old woman, to be nurse in a 
 public nursery. But surely you need not have 
 talked so much about it, or we should have sympa- 
 thized with you a great deal more. 
 
 We began to investigate the condition of the 
 six babies small, sickly creatures most of them 
 sprawling quietly on the floor, or resting open-eyed 
 in a sort of patient languor in any position the little 
 nurse-girls chose to place them. There was one 
 especially which kept up a pitiful wail not a good 
 hearty howl, but a low moaning, as if it had hardly 
 strength to cry. 
 
 Mrs.Keadyhand paused in her statistical inquiries 
 about the nursery, which, however, were fast verging 
 into a mild recipience of the nurse's long list of woes. 
 
14:4: STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 "Ladies, you see I haven't help enough. Such 
 a set of ignorant young chits! Sally, can't you 
 keep that child quiet? Ma'am, it's only fractious; 
 not quite a month old : I don't like 'em so young, 
 but then the mother has to go out charring." 
 
 O ye happy mothers, languid and lovely, receiv- 
 ing in graceful negligee admiring female friends, 
 who come to congratulate and sympathize, and 
 "see baby" just think of this! 
 
 My friend took the matter into her kind hands. 
 "Sally, my girl isn't your name Sally? you 
 hardly know how to hold so young an infant. Not 
 upright it has not strength yet ; and its little feet 
 are quite cold.. There, not so near the fire ; you 
 would scorch its poor head. Give it to me, please. 
 Now, Sally " And, laying the child across her 
 lap, she held its blue feet in her hands, supplying, 
 in her own gentle way, various bits of useful infor- 
 mation, verbal and practical. 
 
 Nurse looked on with considerable dignity at 
 first; but in answer to a hint about "food," and a 
 commendation of the kind of infant nutriment sup- 
 plied gratis by the nursery, she began busily to 
 prepare some, and the kettle at once vacated its 
 place in favor of the pap-saucepan. 
 
 Gradually motherly experience did its work ; the 
 infant ceased crying. 
 
 " It'll begin again the minute you lay it down, 
 ma'am. Babies like nursing so; I daren't nurse 
 'em, else they'd never be out of my arms." 
 
POOR PEOPLE'S CHILDREN. 145 
 
 " But they soon learn to crawl rny children do. 
 I always let them, as soon as they can. Look, 
 Betsy didn't I hear nurse call you Betsy? you 
 have only to keep near and watch it see that it 
 doesn't hurt itself, nor go too far away from the fire. 
 This is bitter weather for little babies. And, Sally 
 yes, you are quite right to listen and notice ; al- 
 ways do so when nurse or the lady-visitors talk to 
 you, and you'll learn every thing in time." 
 
 " There's much need on't," grumbled the head- 
 functionary ; but her subordinates heard not. They 
 made quite a little group round Mrs. Eeadyhand, 
 each girl laden with her small charge, whom she 
 handled very much as she would a doll or a kitten. 
 Meanwhile the eldest baby devoted its tender atten- 
 tion to me, crawling about my skirts, and taking 
 hold of my shoe, looking up all the while ugly, 
 little, thin elf as it was with that soft infantile 
 smile which I defy any woman to resist. One 
 could not well help giving it a toss and a dandle, 
 and laughing when it laughed, even to the missing 
 of many things Mrs. Eeadyhand was saying not 
 in any formal -way; she abhorred all cant. I did 
 not hear her use one of those irreverently familiar 
 Scripture phrases which abounded rather unpleas- 
 antly on the nurse's lips, and on the walls of the 
 school below-stairs, where, I fear, their large-lettered 
 literalness such as, "The blood which cleanseth 
 from all sin," and " The eyes that are over all" 
 Q 
 
146 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 must have proved extremely perplexing to infant 
 minds. But this is a question the j udiciousness of 
 which can not well be discussed here. 
 
 And when, on our departure, she brought her 
 kindly admonitions to a climax by hinting that if , 
 the little damsels improved very much, she, or oth- 
 er ladies she knew, might possibly come and choose 
 their next under-nursemaid out of this very Rag- 
 ged-School nursery, it was really pleasant to see 
 the blushing brightness which ran over every one 
 of the three faces, common as they were, either pre- 
 maturely sharp or hopelessly dull. But the dullest 
 smiled, and the sharpest listened with a modest 
 shyness while thus talked to. It was the involun- 
 tary confirmation of Mrs. Readyhand's doctrine 
 the only reformatory hope of the universe the 
 doctrine of Love. 
 
 We talked much as we went home she and I 
 about this scheme ; its wide possibilities of good, 
 and the defects where will you not find defects in 
 all schemes ? of its working out. 
 
 " I object," said I, " to one great fact in this pub- 
 lic nursery the nurse. Her heart is not in the 
 matter. She is a fine contrast to the excellent Rag- 
 ged-School mistress. If I were a lady-visitor, I'd 
 bundle her off immediately." 
 
 i 'My dear, you are too summary. You might 
 not readily get a better. Her situation is a very 
 difficult one to fill properly. Think what it re- 
 
POOR PEOPLE'S CHILDREN. 147 
 
 quires. All the common sense and firmness of an 
 experienced nurse all the patience and tenderness 
 of a mother. A perfect nurse would be perfect in- 
 deed." 
 
 " She isn't.' 7 
 
 "Perhaps she only wants looking after. Most 
 hired servants do. She needs us, who habitually 
 think more deeply and act more wisely than is 
 common with her class, to take an interest in her 
 duties, and thus show her that they are ours like- 
 wise. If this were but possible ! If one could but 
 seek out the rich idlers of our rank of life, and 
 make their dreary, useless lives cheerful by being 
 useful!' 7 
 
 " Useful to the lower rank of workers?" 
 
 " Exactly. Think of all the women whom we 
 know, and what numbers that we don't know, who, 
 having passed their first youth, are absolutely with- 
 ering away for want of something to do. i Some- 
 thing to do' that grand cry, spoken or silent, of all 
 unmarried and unlikely-to-be-married womanhood 
 ' oh, if I had but something to do !' " 
 
 It was very true; I could have confirmed rny 
 friend's remark by half a dozen instances under 
 my own knowledge. 
 
 11 And the grand difficulty is how to answer it. 
 What are they to do ?" 
 
 " Surely no lack of that, Mrs. Eeadyhand. Nev- 
 er was there a wider harvest nor fewer laborers.' 7 
 
148 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 " Because, my dear, they don't know how to fall 
 to work. They can't find it out for themselves, 
 and in most cases there is nobody to show them. 
 So they sit moping and miserable, either scattering 
 their money in indiscriminate lazy charity, or liv- 
 ing dependent on fathers and brothers, with abund- 
 ance of time, and little enough of money, ignorant 
 that the best beneficence is often not money at all, 
 but time. Plenty of people have money to spend; 
 few have sense, judgment, and practical experience 
 enough to spend it properly." 
 
 "I understand. You want not merely seed, but 
 sowers." 
 
 " Yes, busy, active sowers. I would like to hunt 
 them up far and wide, and give them work to do 
 work that would fill up the blanks in the home- 
 duties they may have, yet not interfere with the 
 rest; work that would prevent their feeling as I 
 know scores of unmarried women do that they 
 have somehow missed their part and place in the 
 grand ever-moving procession of life, and have con- 
 sequently no resource but to lounge idly, or lie tor- 
 pid by the wayside till death overtakes them." 
 
 " That is true. You talk as if you had been c an 
 old young lady' j^ourself." 
 
 "I might have been, and my little daughters 
 may be ; nobodjr knows. Now what think you ? 
 Suppose we could only give to all the ' old young 
 ladies, 7 as you call them, one simple task and duty 
 
POOR PEOPLE'S CHILDREN. 149 
 
 the looking after poor people's children. Setting 
 aside all that is done, or is found impossible to do, 
 for the grown-up generation, and beginning with 
 the new beginning from the very first ; in short, 
 with" 
 
 "With a public nursery? Well, they might do 
 worse." 
 
 "I think so indeed," replied Mrs. Eeadyhand. 
 
 a Many a middle-aged lady keeping house in 
 some dull parental home, or tormented by a brood 
 of lively juvenile sisters, might find very consider- 
 able peace of mind and loving-kindness from an 
 occasional hour spent in looking after poor people's 
 babies then not ending with them as babies ; fol- 
 lowing them up to childhood planning public 
 play-grounds and public working-grounds: I like 
 these a great deal better than even Infant Schools. 
 Teaching them especially what ought to be the 
 chief aim of all eleemosynary aid how to help 
 themselves. Would not this be one good way of 
 silencing the lazy outcry about ' elevating the race? 7 
 Better, perhaps, than this sort of thing." 
 
 She pointed to an election-cab, crammed inside 
 and out with worthy and independent voters, glo- 
 rious in shirt-sleeves and drink, shouting at the top 
 of their voices for the successful candidate. 
 
 " Lord has won, you see. Well, I am glad. 
 
 He is an excellent young man, they say. Perhaps 
 he may be got to take an interest in our plans. 
 
150 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 But, after all, those whom I chiefly look to for aid 
 are what Mrs. Ellis calls the Daughters of England." 
 
 One daughter of England type of many more- 
 could not help regarding with mingled compunc- 
 tion and respect a certain matron of England, who, 
 she knew, taught and reared half a dozen children 
 of her own, and yet managed to find time for all 
 these plans and doings in behalf of other folks' 
 children; and as, while thus talking, we passed 
 through the heavy -atmosphered, dirty streets, with 
 their evening loungers collecting, and their evening 
 shop-lamps beginning to flare, it was impossible not 
 to think sadly of the great amount of evil and mis- 
 ery to be battled with, and the comparative help- 
 lessness of even the strongest hand ; of the infinite 
 deal to be done, and the few who can without 
 contravening the great just law, that charity begins 
 at home find opportunities of doing it. 
 
 "Still, my dear," said Mrs. Eeadyhand, gently, 
 " there is a wise saying : ' Whatever thy hand find- 
 eth to do, do it with thy might.' I know how little 
 you can by any possibility do in this way ; but 
 there is one thing you can do you can write an 
 article." 
 
 u I will ; and then some wiser head and freer 
 hand may put into practice all these things which 
 we have been looking at and talking over. I sup- 
 pose I have simply to relate facts as they were 
 brought under our notice." 
 
POOR PEOPLE'S CHILDREN. 151 
 
 " That is all. And who knows what good might 
 come of it?" said my friend, smiling as we reached 
 her door. 
 
 " Then most certainly I will write my article." 
 
 I have written it. 
 
152 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 Companions. 
 
 I CERTAINLY do meet with odd people on my 
 travels, though these are neither numerous nor ex- 
 tensive, I having never passed the bounds of 
 speaking Hibernice my three native countries; 
 yet within England, Scotland, and Ireland I have 
 met with characters enough to set up a modern Sen- 
 timental Journey, and heard little bits of histories, 
 full of nature, feeling, or humor, that would furnish 
 studies for many a novel-writer. Most of these I 
 have lighted upon in railway carriages places 
 fruitful to one who generally travels second-class 
 and alone. 
 
 Can it be that clothes and purses do not confer 
 that unquestionable respectability which it is gen- 
 erally supposed they do ? else why, in spite of silk 
 gowns, unexceptionable broadcloth, and so on, can 
 first-class never trust itself to itself, but must stare, 
 in mute investigation of its own merits and posi- 
 tion, till within a county or so of its terminus, when 
 repentance and satisfied gentility come quite too 
 late ? Now second-class, whose only passport is its 
 face, and only safe-conduct its civil behavior, has 
 no such qualms, but plunges at once into the evi- 
 
TRAVELING COMPANIONS. 153 
 
 dent duties of traveling humanity, and reaps corre- 
 sponding benefits. 
 
 Nature certainly meant me for a second-class pas- 
 senger. I can not help taking a vivid interest in 
 every thing and every body around me. Con- 
 vinced that 
 
 "The proper study of mankind is man," 
 
 or woman, as it happens, I suffer no little impedi- 
 ments to daunt me, and succumb to none of those 
 slight annoyances which are grave evils to persons 
 of sensitive organization. To be sure, I have some- 
 times met with a few inconveniences. It was not 
 pleasant to be thrust lately into the carriage with 
 those two newly-married couples, of the very low- 
 est grade of agricultural life, especially when the 
 one husband, half-seas over, would balance sleepily 
 between the corner and his wife's shoulder, and the 
 other wife chattered the most coquettish nonsense 
 to the other husband. Still, in one of each pair I 
 could trace a quiet sturdy seriousness, which led 
 me to moralize on the future fate of all four, and 
 even to see a wise meaning in the instinctive con- 
 trariety by which married couples often choose one 
 another, and which, by coupling opposite faults 
 and opposite virtues, frequently improves the char- 
 acter of both. 
 
 Also, one wet day, I might have liked other 
 company than those six rough laborers who press- 
 ed in, accompanied by the unmistakable fustian 
 G2 
 
154 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 odor, all brutish and stupid, and the only " 'cute" 
 one fierce with his wrong in having the next car- 
 riage closed in his face by a u gentleman." How 
 the man kept looking at his crushed bleeding fin- 
 ger, and muttering savagely, " He'd none ha' done 
 it if I'd had a good coat on my back !" Yet even 
 among these it was interesting to watch the care 
 with which three or four of them guarded each a 
 branch of white sloe-blossom, to brighten some 
 wretched London attic the train was going to 
 London, and it was more than interesting even 
 touching, if it had not been so lamentable in its 
 indications, to see the blank gaze of sullen wonder 
 with which the man with the hurt finger stared at 
 me when I asked the simple civil question, in the 
 commonly civil tone which we English are apt to 
 think it lowers our dignity to use to any but our 
 equals, "if he disliked having the window open?" 
 He made me not the smallest reply he only 
 stared. Poor fellow! I wonder whether, in lav- 
 ishing abuse on the boorish ness of the British peas- 
 ant, it ever crosses the superior British mind to try 
 the novel system of teaching inferiors politeness 
 ~by example ? 
 
 But I am wandering from the companions who 
 amused and occupied me during a day's journey 
 last week, and who unconsciously suggested this 
 article. Honest folk ! I dare say it never struck 
 their simple imaginations that they were decided 
 
TRAVELING COMPANIONS. 155 
 
 "characters," or that "a chiel" in the corner was 
 "takin' notes" of their various peculiarities. 
 
 It was a double carriage, meant for sixteen, and 
 nearly full. Various comings and goings took 
 place the first hour, which I scarcely observed till, 
 finally waking up out of thought, and feeling that 
 one must take an interest in something, rny rnind 
 centred itself in the other compartment on a row 
 of black curls, slightly marked with gray, under a 
 sailor-like sort of cap, and above a very nautical 
 pair of shoulders. Shortly an unmistakably nauti- 
 cal voice, seasoned with a slight foreign, or, as I 
 afterward discovered, Jersey accent, made itself 
 heard through the clatter of tongues at their end 
 of the carriage and the quiet silence of ours. The 
 passengers there consisted of three women in black, 
 myself, and a gentleman, who looked like a clergy- 
 man. 
 
 The black curls shook, and the brawny hands 
 gesticulated more and more in the enthusiasm of 
 description to some person opposite. Shortly I saw 
 that the whole compartment, and even those in our 
 own who could hear, were absorbed in attending 
 to our maritime friend. 
 
 " When I was becalmed off the Isle of France" 
 u When I commanded the So-and-so, trading with 
 the West Indies" " When we ran ashore off the 
 coast of Guinea" these and similar phrases reached 
 us small fragments of conversation, and casual al- 
 
156 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 lusions to lands in every quarter of the globe, which 
 at once arrest the attention and admiration of us 
 islanders. Truly, if we Britons have a weakness, 
 it is for those who traffic upon the deep waters. 
 The sea-captain was, I saw, fast becoming the hero 
 of the carriage. 
 
 I could only see his black curls; but I was 
 amused by the face opposite to him u fat, fair, and 
 forty 7 ' thoroughly English, and set off in thor- 
 oughly English taste by yellow flowers inside a 
 bright red bonnet : bourgeoise to the core. She 
 might have never trod beyond the safe pavement 
 of some snug provincial town save when once for 
 she wore a bracelet that I felt sure was bought at 
 the Crystal Palace dragged up to London to bring 
 down to admiring neighbors her report of its won- 
 ders a comfortable, jolly, impassive face, which 
 listened with a sort of patronizing smile, I thought, 
 to the wonders of the deep, as detailed by the sailor. 
 I never was more astonished in my life than when, 
 in a pause of the anecdote it was an account of 
 some attack at sea Mrs. Eed-bonnet observed in 
 the quietest drawl, 
 
 "Yes, they thought the bursting o' that gun 
 would ha 7 killed him ; but I just laid him down on 
 a table in the cabin, and I plastered his face all over 
 with wadding, and cut two holes for his eyes, and 
 he got well somehow. There bean't no particular 
 scar left eh ? You see ?" Appealing to the car- 
 
TRAVELING COMPANIONS. 157 
 
 riage generally, as a mild recognition of her per- 
 sonal property in the aforesaid black curls and 
 broad shoulders, which nodded acquiescence. 
 
 " Ay, ay they'd have finished me more than 
 once but for her there." 
 
 " Her" smiled, and in the aforesaid meek drawl 
 continued, "Yes, we'd some bad business in that 
 nigger trade. Do you remember the blackie that 
 was nigh killing you asleep in the cabin ? only I 
 happened to come in, and stuck a sword into him. 
 I helped to throw the other three black rascals 
 overboard ; I was a strong woman then." 
 
 And the lazy blue eyes drooped, and the fat 
 cheeks smiled in amiable deprecation, while the 
 whole carriage looked with amazed curiosity at this 
 middle-aged matronly Thalestris whom we had got 
 among us. 
 
 " Ay, ay my wife's right," said the sea-captain, 
 who thereupon subsided a little, and left his better 
 half to give tongue, which she did pretty freely, 
 telling in that languid dolorous voice the most un- 
 accountable stories: Of niggers running away 
 " So I just thought I'd put a musket to his back ;" 
 of niggers trying to assassinate her when her hus- 
 band lay sick " but I just had a horsewhip in my 
 hand, and I gave it the fellow till he howled for 
 mercy : you must get the upper hand of these 
 blackies, or they'll get the upper hand of you ;" of 
 shipwrecks, disasters, illness of the captain "But 
 
158 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 oh, bless you, the crew always minded me ; they 
 knew I could command the ship almost as well as 
 him." All of which the captain lazily confirmed 
 with his gruff "Ay, ay;" he had evidently long 
 ceased to consider his wife at all a remarkable per- 
 sonage. 
 
 Not so her present audience. More than one 
 smile arose of amused incredulity, but always, I no- 
 ticed, behind the black head and its curls. And fat 
 and rosy as the woman's face was, I could trace a 
 certain cold hardness in the blue eyes, a squareness 
 of jaw, and merciless rigidity of mouth, which made 
 me feel that, comfortable as she looked, on the 
 whole, I had rather not have been one of the " ras- 
 cally niggers" who offended Mrs. Eed-bonnet. 
 
 Various turns her conversation took, from these 
 " raw - head - and - bloody - bones" anecdotes, some of 
 which were so cruel that for the credit of woman- 
 hood I had rather not put them down, to little epi- 
 sodes in the domestic history of " a poll-parrot, 
 whom I took out of the nest, and now he speaks 
 three languages I declare he does; and for sense 
 and fondness he's just as good as a child." Then, 
 in answer to a question, with a momentary shadow 
 over the round face, "No, sir; we have got no 
 children." Poor Eed-bonnet! perhaps otherwise 
 she would not have "put a musket into the back" 
 of an unlucky blackamoor, who must once have 
 been mother's son to somebody. 
 
TKAVELING COMPANIONS. 159 
 
 Human nature is weak, especially female nature. 
 It can resist an attack of pirates much easier than 
 the petty vanity of telling the story afterward, with 
 every possible addition, for the entertainment of a 
 railway carriage. In ours, the masculine tongue 
 stopped entirely reposed on the glory of adven- 
 tures passed through or only now and then drop- 
 ped a gruff word, in true man fashion, as if when a 
 thing was once done it was a great " bother" after- 
 ward to be obliged to talk about it. 
 
 Not so the better half. The captain's wife chat- 
 tered on at the rate of nine knots an hour, till the 
 three quiet dames in black, who sat by me, began 
 to cast doubtful looks at one another, and up to the 
 carriage roof, in the mild pharisaical style of thank- 
 ful self-gratulation that the}'- were not as some other 
 folk were. Even the pale young clergyman turned 
 his quiet head half over the compartment, listening 
 with an air half - shocked, half - compassionate, to 
 these apocryphal tales of slave-stealing off the Afri- 
 can coast, and accidental butcheries on the Chinese 
 seas, told with as much coolness as if the offending 
 Malays had been Cochin China fowls. 
 
 I had noticed the parson's head before. It was 
 one of those that you will frequently find in En- 
 glish country pulpits pale, fair-haired, with fea- 
 tures so delicately cut, and woman-like in short, 
 that you instinctively think, " That man must be 
 very like his mother." Yet there was great firm- 
 
160 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 ness in it the sort of firmness you never see but 
 in fair people mild, and not aggressive, yet capa- 
 ble of resistance to the death. The brow, square 
 and high, and made higher still by a slight baldness, 
 seemed to occupy two thirds of the head. Intel- 
 lect, industry, patience, perseverance, even a certain 
 sweet kindliness, were all there, and something else, 
 which, alas ! you too often see in English country 
 clergymen : a narrowness, a placid assertion of in- 
 fallible right the only possible right being that 
 which the asserter holds a still, cold, univesti ga- 
 ting, satisfied air, as if belief to him had only one 
 phase, and that was the particular phase in which 
 its defender saw it. The Thirty-nine Articles were 
 written in his face, every thing beside them or be- 
 yond them being heretical or impossible. 
 
 At least, this was the impression he gave me; 
 if a false one, and the reverend unknown should 
 read this paper, I here humbly demand his pardon ; 
 for he was true to his profession, which was more 
 than I was, for I confess to an involuntary smile 
 when, shooting her arrow abroad, it might be at 
 random, or it might not, Mrs. Red-bonnet thus broke 
 out : 
 
 " Yes, it's all very fine to talk about savages; for 
 my part, I should like to tell the people at home a 
 bit of what I know about the missionaries that teach 
 'em. Lor 7 bless ye ! I wouldn't give a penny to a 
 missionary. I've seen 'em abroad. They're all a 
 
TRAVELING- COMPANIONS. 161 
 
 take-in. They just learn a few little black boys 
 their letters, and then they go up country and enj'y 
 themselves. I knows their ways ! Of all the hum- 
 bugs on earth, there's not a bigger humbug than a 
 missionary." 
 
 More than one pair of eyes glanced toward the 
 clergyman. He sat motionless, his thin lips drawn 
 almost into a straight line ; a pale red came into 
 his cheek, and faded away again, but he never said 
 a word. 
 
 " Ay," added the Jersey captain, with a loud sea- 
 laugh, innocent enough, for his back was to the 
 clergyman, whom I do not suppose he had even 
 seen, "but the poor fellows mean no harm; it is 
 only in the way of business. One of them said to 
 me, when I asked of him what he went out for, 
 ' Captain,' says he, ' what do you sail your ship for?' 
 'Money,' says I. 'That's it,' says he; 'so do I.' 
 And, by George, it's the same with all them poor 
 missionary fellows ; they only do it for the money." 
 
 The clergyman started, his brow was knitted, his 
 thin sallow hands tightened on one another, yet still 
 he kept silence. His soul evidently writhed within 
 him at these slanders cast on his cloth, but he did 
 not speak a word. He was not born for a Martin 
 Luther, a Eenwick, a John Knox : he could " keep 
 the faith," but he could not fight for it. He could 
 sit still, with those blue eyes flashing indignant fire, 
 those delicate lips curled with scornful disgust at 
 
162 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 the coarseness of the attacks leveled at his creed 
 nay, at any creed, in the presence of one of its vow- 
 ed professors ; but it never occurred to him to turn 
 and say a quiet word not in defense of the faith, 
 for it needed none, but in protestation against the 
 blind, ignorant injustice which could condemn a 
 whole brotherhood for the folly or -wickedness of 
 one. It never seemed to cross his mind to say to 
 these ignorant seafaring people, of whom I heard my 
 neighbor whispering, horrified, "What heathens!' 7 
 that the shortcomings of a thousand priests are 
 powerless to desecrate real Christianity. Many a 
 poor fool may close his shutters and set up his far- 
 thing candle, or even hide himself through life in a 
 cave of his own burrowing, but there is daylight in 
 the world for all that. 
 
 But, passive as he was, there was something in 
 the clergyman's earnest ascetic face which gave a 
 tacit condemnation to Mrs. Eed-bonnet. Gradually 
 her onslaughts ceased, for nobody seconded them; 
 and after the first, nobody even smiled. Some- 
 thing of that involuntary " respect for the clergy," 
 which lies firm and safe at the bottom of the Saxon 
 heart, especially in the provinces, imposed general 
 silence ; and the woman, who was not a bad sort 
 of woman either, turned her course of conversation, 
 and went on a more legitimate tack. 
 
 I did not listen to it ; my mind was pondering 
 over the pale young priest, and how strange it is 
 
TRAVELING COMPANIONS; 163 
 
 that Truth, of itself so pure and strong the very 
 strongest thing in the whole world should often 
 be treated by its professors as if it were too brittle 
 to bear handling, too tender to let the least breath 
 of air blow upon it, too frail to stand the smallest 
 contamination from without. Good God ! I thought, 
 if Christians would only believe enough in their 
 own faith to trust it to itself and to Thee ! 
 
 We reached the terminus; and, as usual, all the 
 fellow-passengers, like Macbeth's witches, "made 
 themselves air." Mrs. Red-bonnet, the captain, the 
 clergyman, myself, and the three meek dummies in 
 black, severally parted, in all human probability 
 never to meet again in this world. Peace go with 
 them ! I am their debtor for a few harmless medi- 
 tations ; and if they see themselves in this article, 
 it will do them no harm perhaps a little good. 
 
 I stopped at the terminus one of the principal 
 English ports our great southern sea-gate, as it 
 were. The salt smell blew across me, and the dim 
 tops of far-away masts rose over the houses, indi- 
 cating the quay, which is the grand rendezvous of 
 partings and meetings between England and her 
 colonies England and half the known world. 
 
 Having to stay two hours, I went into the wait- 
 ing-room. There, starting up as I entered, was a 
 lady : I never shall forget her face ! 
 
 Young, though not in first youth ; sweet, so in- 
 expressibly sweet, that you forgot to notice wheth- 
 
164 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 er it was beautiful ; nay, it shamed you from look- 
 ing at it at all, for there were the red swollen eye- 
 lids the hot spots, one on each cheek, while the 
 rest of the face, though composed, was dead white. 
 Its story might be easily guessed at ; for this is, as 
 I said, the great sea-gate, the place of meetings and 
 partings memorable, year by year, to hundreds 
 and thousands. She was sitting at the table; on 
 one side of her lay a pocket-book, and two or three 
 letters ; on the other, open, the waiting-room Bible, 
 in which she seemed to have been reading. Hast- 
 ily she shut it, and started up. 
 
 No, there was no need for that. I did the only 
 thing possible under the circumstances quitted 
 the room as quickly as I came into it. Whether 
 I ever saw the lady again, how much I felt, or pon- 
 dered, or guessed of the pang which only those 
 who have endured can understand, I do not intend 
 to say ; let it remain between her and me : I shall 
 not "put her in print." If she chance to read this 
 paper, perhaps she will remember. I will only 
 chronicle this one fact, which was to me a curious 
 comment on " my traveling companions" on the 
 " heathen" captain and his wife, the silent, wrathful, 
 clergyman, the "humbug" missionary and all- 
 how I found her, with her unknown story betray- 
 ed in every line of her poor face, sitting quiet in 
 the solitary waiting-room, with her hand on the 
 open Bible. 
 
THROUGH THE POWDER-MILLS. 165 
 
 j tfje $ crofter-mills. 
 
 " CHILDREN, suppose we go to-day to see the 
 powder-mills?" 
 
 This maternal invitation was not very warmly 
 responded to. Some of us, here safely buried out 
 of the busy world, and greatly enjoying our en- 
 tombment, thought nothing so interesting as our 
 own old ruin where we had nestled for the sum- 
 mer, in company with the owls and crows noth- 
 ing so charming as our woody braes, our sunny 
 castle garden, our ever-musical linn. The mere 
 mention of any mills and powder-mills pah! 
 was intolerable. Another fair division of a learn- 
 ed tendency suggested that powder-mills had an 
 unpleasant habit of blowing themselves up, especial- 
 ly in the presence of visitors ; and life being still 
 valuable for scientific and other purposes, this divis- 
 ion resolutely declined to go. A third section of 
 our household fortunately indifferent to all exter- 
 nal entertainments, and willing to do any thing or 
 go any where under certain conditions and with 
 certain beloved accompaniments, merely hinted that 
 the expedition would be " stupid." 
 
 " Children, papa particularly wishes you to go.' 7 
 
166 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 Of course we went. 
 
 It was a lovely day in October a Scottish Oc- 
 tober resembling that " Indian summer" of which 
 Americans boast, and which must be the heaven- 
 liest season of the year. We set off young men 
 and maidens, mother and bairns there is nothing 
 more pleasant than a country walk with children. 
 Forgetting the powder-mills, our destination, and 
 scorning all prognostications about the doubtful- 
 ness of our return except in a few blackened frag- 
 ments, we gave ourselves up to the delight of the 
 ramble. 
 
 Never mind, children, though we slip at every 
 step down the steep curved road, muddy with last 
 night's rain, and thickly sown with fallen leaves. 
 One look backward at our old castle, the broken 
 turret of which stands out against a sky of that 
 soft, pale, milky blue peculiar to autumn clear, 
 though you feel at any minute it may hide itself 
 under those white fleecy clouds, and darken into 
 settled rain. Still, never mind a brighter day 
 than this has not blessed us through the whole 
 year, even if it be the last. 
 
 I love autumn ; I love every hour of a day like 
 this, snatched, as it were, in the very face of win- 
 ter, and reveled in no, not reveled, it is too young 
 and foolish a word but enjoyed, solemnly and 
 thankfully enjoyed, like a late-in-life happiness 
 perhaps the truest and sacredest of all. I love ev- 
 
THROUGH THE POWDER-MILLS. 167 
 
 ery step of a walk like this every soft downward 
 flitter of the contented leaves, that have done their 
 summer work, and seem not afraid of dying. I 
 like to stop every yard or two to pull a last-re- 
 maining flower, a stray bit of woodbine, or a red 
 crane's-bill ; to notice the shimmering spider-webs, 
 covering every fern and tall grass-seed easily dis- 
 tinguished, for on them the dew lies all day now. 
 Plunging through this wood would make us as wet 
 almost as fording the river our own river, which 
 we can hear running at the foot of this brae. And 
 there, skirting along, we catch a glimpse of the little 
 nooky valley where lies our familiar bleach-field, 
 with the white webs spread out in the sunshine. 
 
 Emerging into a high road, we still hear unseen 
 the sound of falling waters coming up from the bot- 
 tom of the woody slope. 
 
 " We are safe to follow the stream up to the pow- 
 der-mills," said mamma. 
 
 Truly, this is the very last place where one would 
 think of looking for any sort of manufacture, least 
 of all that which makes of "villainous saltpetre" 
 and other material 
 
 Out of the bowels of the harmless earth" 
 
 the fearful combination, horror of many a mother, 
 from the time when little Jack burns his wicked 
 wee fingers with a surreptitious squib on Gunpow- 
 der-plot Day, till God help her! she finds "my 
 
168 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 poor son John" in the fatal lists that in their terri- 
 ble brevity come home to us from Sebastopol. 
 
 Sebastopol ! we can hardly believe there is such 
 a place when strolling along here. What a lovely 
 spot! A deep winding gorge, cut cleanly down 
 out of the hilly country at the bottom of which the 
 river runs no, not runs, but skips and dances 
 swiftly and brightly over a bed of stones, some- 
 times so shallow we can almost cross it, sometimes 
 settling into deep pools. It has very high banks 
 thick with trees, or fringed with large ferns; now 
 and then a rough, bare, reddish rock crops out, 
 and makes little "bits" so exquisite that one would 
 not wonder to find an artist and an easel planted 
 at every hundred yards. But no ; this glen is out 
 of the beaten tracks of painters and tourists ; nobody 
 minds it; it is only " the road to the powder-mills." 
 
 So we stroll along, marveling at its beauty, its 
 delicious sights and sounds, though of the latter 
 there is nothing louder than the lap-lap of the wa- 
 ters, or the whirr of a wood-pigeon's wing. We do 
 not meet a soul, nor seem to expect it ; every where 
 is spread a safe solitude, a golden Arcadian calm. 
 
 "The road to the powder-mills." We have al- 
 most forgotten their existence. However, here, on 
 an old stone gateway which might answer as portal 
 to any thing in the feudal line, we espy a notifica- 
 tion of "No admission except on business." Of 
 course our entrance is "on business," as this must 
 
THROUGH THE POWDER-MILLS. 169 
 
 be our destination. But we see nothing more por- 
 tentous than a decent cottage, with a border of 
 flowers and a kale-yard behind, sloping riverward. 
 At the door stands a comely woman, with a couple 
 of fat, flaxen-haired little ones; bless their little 
 hearts ! they do not look as if they belonged to a 
 powder-mill. However, to make sure, we ask the 
 question. 
 
 " Ou ay," briefly replies the woman, and points 
 our way on. 
 
 No symptoms whatever of any thing more alarm- 
 ing than a lovely country road skirting the river 
 which runs at our left hand, while on the right is a 
 high bank all brambles and fern. As for any sign 
 of human habitation yes, here is certainly a sort 
 of cottage, partly cut out of the rock, partly built 
 of stone, the door and windows carefully fastened 
 up, but otherwise nothing remarkable ; and beside 
 it, greatly to the children's delight, springs from a 
 rock one of those slender runnels that in summer 
 dwindle to a mere thread. Led by a rude wooden 
 spout, it comes leaping down no thicker than a girl's 
 wrist. We rush to it, and try hard to quench our 
 thirst out of Adam's goblet namely, six drops 
 caught in the palm of the hand until one brilliant 
 genius boldly stands under, and puts his lips to the 
 tiny douche, getting at once his fill, not only in 
 mouth, but in eyes, nose, and shirt -collar. Then 
 the children are seized with a new fit of drouth, and 
 H 
 
170 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 insist on trying the same experiment, which results 
 in a universal laugh, and a pretty general soaking. 
 
 All this time, save the woman and the bairns, we 
 had not seen a living soul. 
 
 " Where shall we find the powder-mills?" became 
 a serious question ; and some of us suggested that 
 they might have been blown up over-night, and be 
 found nowhere at all. At last, to solve the diffi- 
 culty, we beheld, issuing from a second low round 
 building, two ay, actually two men. Our young- 
 est shrank back behind her mamma's shawl. 
 
 For oh ! how grim to look upon were these indi- 
 viduals black-faced, sooty-handed, with an odd, 
 uncertain frightened air. They eyed us in a sort 
 of uneasy curiosity, as if wondering how on earth 
 we had got in there, but said nothing. 
 
 We passed, though at a distance of some fifty 
 yards, another small round house, through the half- 
 opened door of which we discerned a heap of what 
 looked like butter-kegs, soot-blackened. Hard by 
 stood, with equally sombre looks, another of these 
 Acheroiitic workmen. And then we met a wagon, 
 blackened all over ; it rolled slowly along, the green 
 boughs that overhung the road brushing its top, 
 which was covered in as carefully as if there had 
 been somebody dead inside. The wagoner he 
 might have been Pluto's own looked at our gay 
 laughing party with the same air of glum astonish- 
 ment, and passed us by. 
 
THROUGH THE POWDER-MILLS. 171 
 
 "I'm sure that cart is full of gunpowder." 
 
 " Do you think those shut-up houses can be pow- 
 der magazines?" 
 
 " I vow I smell sulphur!" 
 
 And surely, in the midst of this lovely glen, 
 through the murmur of the water, and the fresh 
 scent of the dewy ferns, we became sensible of a 
 most Tartarean odor. We had reached the gun- 
 powder region at last. 
 
 The green lane broke into an open space, black- 
 ened with debris of unknown kind ; the running 
 stream was caught and diverted into various mys- 
 terious channels, or led under water-wheels in dark 
 buildings, of which the doors seemed sedulously 
 kept half closed. Another peculiarity of these 
 buildings was that each was placed separate, within a 
 considerable distance of the other. Between them, 
 a few workmen were moving about with that grim 
 cautiousness which seemed the characteristic of the 
 place. There was none of the careless jollity one 
 usually sees in a manufacturing community ; every 
 body seemed to go about as if he had something on 
 his mind. 
 
 A gentleman approached. " Ladies, I think you 
 must have mistaken your way. We never allow 
 strangers through our premises : it would be highly ' 
 dangerous." 
 
 " Dangerous!" and our old horrors revived. 
 
 " Yes, rnadam," continued the owner, after he had 
 
172 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 been informed who we were, and our passport to 
 his domains. ''You see, the most trivial careless- 
 ness, a spark from a cigar, the friction of a shoe-nail 
 against the floor might blow up any one of our mag- 
 azines or work-shops one, or even more ; though, 
 as you may have noticed, we place them as far 
 asunder as we can, for fear of accident." 
 
 "Do accidents often occur?" we asked, in some 
 trepidation. 
 
 " Fewer of late years ; but when they do they are 
 rather serious. My house there" and the old gen- 
 tleman, who, from his comfortable and benign coun- 
 tenance and manner, might have spent his days in 
 growing innocent wheat instead of fabricating gun- 
 powder, pointed to a handsome abode on the top of 
 the hill " my house there had once the roof torn 
 off, and the drawing-room windows blown in with 
 an explosion, so it behooves us to take precautions." 
 
 " Perhaps it were better not to go," hesitated 
 some of us, and wished ourselves well out of this 
 den of danger. 
 
 " No fear," smiled the mill-owner. " If you will 
 follow my son, and go only where he tells you, you 
 will come to no harm." 
 
 We obeyed; not without qualms, which, howev- 
 er, gradually vanished under the gentlemanly kind- 
 ness and intelligence of our guide. 
 
 Now this does not pretend to be a scientific "ar- 
 ticle." Any one who wishes to know how gun- 
 
THROUGH THE POWDER-MILLS. 173 
 
 powder is made must just look out the letter G in 
 the nearest cyclopaedia; for, in spite of "my son's" 
 courteous arid lucid explanations as we went 
 through the mills, I have at this minute the very 
 vaguest ideas on the subject. I know we went up 
 and down for about half a mile along the river-side, 
 poked our heads tremblingly into various dark 
 buildings, in one of which was a gigantic water- 
 wheel, grinding incessantly at what was said to be 
 gunpowder, and in which the intrusion of a few 
 grains of some foreign body would blow up the 
 whole concern, and scatter destruction in all direc- 
 tions. I know we crossed the stream on a foot- 
 bridge, and for a few moments paused there to look 
 up at a perpendicular rock, chiefly composed of red 
 sandstone. It was about 100 feet high, crowned by 
 a natural turret, round which clustered bushes of 
 green broom, pendent bramble- wreaths, and boughs 
 of yellow birk a view picturesque enough to be 
 made use of, and exhibited (like our neighboring 
 show-castle) at sixpence per head, but which here 
 abides unnoticed and tourist-free, being only " the 
 powder-mills," 
 
 I know, likewise, that we might have gained an 
 infinite deal of useful information had not our minds 
 been sorely distracted by the natural propensity of 
 the younger generation to stand on the edge of deep 
 water-tanks ; to persist in penetrating into murky 
 houses, whence issued sulphurous stenches ; to show 
 
174 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 a fatal inclination to take and handle hot saltpetre 
 crystals in fact, to do any thing they ought not to 
 do, and nothing that they ought a peculiarity not, 
 on the whole, objectionable, since a child is good 
 for little without a certain degree of intelligent in- 
 quisitiveness. 
 
 Well, we ran the gauntlet of the whole machin- 
 ery, and no ill came to any body. We saw the 
 grinding, drying, and mixing of those ingredients, 
 harmless enough apart, which make up the great 
 destructive agent the most cursed invention of the 
 human race. We saw it packed in those innocent- 
 looking kegs, and lying safe and peaceful in those 
 little stone-houses, over which beech-trees shook 
 their leaves, and fern and brambles grew, until it 
 should be transferred thence to work abroad its 
 errand of death. 
 
 u We have sent a great deal to the Turkish gov- 
 ernment, for the Crimea," was the answer to a very 
 natural question on our part. " Indeed, we send it 
 from these mills to every quarter of the world.' 7 
 
 Heaven help the world ! There was something 
 sickening in the idea how, in these terrible war- 
 times, a human life might hang, as it were, upon 
 every ounce of the fatal substance that lay so snug 
 in this quiet glen ; how we had close at our hand 
 what may ere long be destined to level a city, de- 
 stroy a fleet, or slaughter an army. And yet the 
 river went singing on, and the boughs waved, and 
 
THROUGH THE POWDER-MILLS. 175 
 
 the bees buzzed about in the sunshine, and all the 
 beautiful world of nature lived its innocent uncon- 
 scious life, each in its own way. It was an awful 
 thought a thought which nothing could ease, save 
 a belief in over-ruling Omnipotence, and in that 
 manifestation of it which makes it to us likewise 
 All-wisdom and All-love. 
 
 We ended our inspection of the powder-mills, 
 being, if not practically wiser concerning them, at 
 all events, considerably the better for many new 
 and serious thoughts. Quitting our kind guide, 
 who had brought us to the entrance, we again re- 
 traced our way to the farther end of the glen. The 
 works altogether extended, we were told, for more 
 than a mile along the river-side. Eepassing the 
 various places, but keeping at a safe distance, and 
 standing most respectfully aside whenever we met 
 one of the funeral-looking powder-wagons with its 
 grim wagoner I declare solemnly we did not meet 
 a single workman who wore a smile upon his face ! 
 we came at last to the utmost boundary of the 
 mills. 
 
 I think more than one of us breathed freer, and 
 took a brighter and cheerier view of the outside 
 world, when we had got fairly out of sight and smell 
 of Friar Bacon's atrocious condiments admirable 
 cookery for the feast of death ; and, walking along 
 past a cottage and a byre, where stood a sturdy 
 farmer-lad with his team, and a lassie with a bucket 
 
176 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 both good specimens of that bright, honest, intel- 
 ligent cast of face which one continually meets with 
 in the pastoral districts of Scotland we came, by 
 a sudden twist in the road, upon a "bonnie sight." 
 
 On a bare knoll, round which the stream curved, 
 clustered about in all directions, down even to the 
 shiny shallows of the water, lay a flock of sheep 
 the whitest, the fattest, the meekest, the happiest- 
 looking sheep ; not in scores merely, but in hund- 
 reds, basking in the sun, chewing the cud en masse, 
 and at the sound of footsteps just turning round 
 their innocent mild faces, but scarcely a single one 
 stirred. They were not afraid why need they be ? 
 They looked as if not a thought of harm or evil 
 had ever troubled their lives. A little way off 
 were the two shepherds one lolling on the ground, 
 the other standing smoking his pipe, and at their 
 feet the collies dozed in peace.. 
 
 We began talking to one of the shepherds a 
 brown-faced old fellow, with a keen honest eye and 
 shaggy brows. Nothing loth, he came and leaned 
 against the little wooden bridge where we were sit- 
 ting, and listened with a gratified smile to our warm 
 admiration of his charge. 
 
 " They're no bad," was all he answered. 
 
 We asked where they came from. 
 
 " Frae Skye, and going to Galashiels." 
 
 "You are a Highlandman?" 
 
 "Ay, but no o 7 Skye; I come frae Loch " 
 
THROUGH THE POWDER-MILLS. 177 
 
 (I missed the word) "by Inverness" as, indeed, 
 one might almost have guessed by his very pure 
 accent. 
 
 " It is a fine country about Inverness." 
 
 " 7 Tis that indeed ; and mony guid sheep there- 
 abouts too. But these come frae Skye," he repeat- 
 ed, looking down at his fleecy friends. 
 
 "Did you bring them all the way? and how 
 long have you been on the road ?" 
 
 " Just" he paused to ponder "just thirty -four 
 days." 
 
 "And how many are there in the flock?" 
 
 "Five hundred and forty." 
 
 To bring 540 sheep a month's journey across the 
 country seemed no easy undertaking. "And how 
 many miles a day do you get over?" 
 
 "About ten, or rnaybe twal nae mair: they're 
 tender beasts, ye ken." 
 
 " And what do you do at night?" 
 
 " Watch." 
 
 "Isn't it very cold lying out of nights now?" 
 
 The old shepherd shrugged his shoulders, but 
 said sturdily, "Ou, no." 
 
 " Where did you .lie last night?" 
 
 " Out on the back o' the Pentlands." 
 
 They looked bright and sunshiny enough now, 
 these fairest of all the Lowland hills, but last night 
 I remembered we could not see them for mist and 
 rain. 
 
 H2 
 
178 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 " Come, Wullie, we maun awa'," said our friend 
 to his companion, after standing a few minutes 
 more silently leaning over the bridge, with his 
 bonnet pulled over his eyes. 
 
 The lad sprang up, likewise the collies. Soon 
 the sheep were roused into a general commotion, 
 and, divided into two flocks, slowly began to move 
 away. Our shepherd waited for the first detach- 
 ment to clear off; then, summoning his flock and 
 his dog in some incomprehensible Gaelic, drew his 
 plaid over his shoulder and prepared to follow. 
 
 " Is that plaid all you have to hap you when you 
 lie out of nights?" I asked, as we bade him good- 
 
 by. 
 
 " Ou, ay. It's wearin' auld like myself but it's 
 no that ill, and it'll last out my time. Guid-day, 
 leddies guid-day." 
 
 And so, wrapping it round him, the old shepherd 
 went after his flock. 
 
 " Surely they are not going through the powder- 
 mills!" 
 
 No, no. We saw them, a few minutes after, 
 winding leisurely up the brae that led into the flat 
 country the country of corn-fields and pasture- 
 lands. We caught the last glimmer of the white 
 moving mass as it disappeared under the trees ; we 
 heard, fainter and fainter, the sharp barking of the 
 dogs; and then we were sitting alone on the small 
 bridge, listening to the running of the river, and 
 
THROUGH THE POWDER-MILLS. 179 
 
 looking out lazily upon the sunny curves of the 
 Pentlands far away. 
 
 " I wonder," whispered one of us, " whether there 
 will ever come a time when there shall be required 
 no such thing in the world as gunpowder mills I" 
 
180 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 Brother Ionatljan'0 
 
 WHO, living within reach of that big town, the 
 inhabitants of which you may hear speaking con- 
 descendingly of London as " our southern metropo- 
 lis," does not know the long low line of the Mersey 
 shore, ending, or rather beginning, in the intermin- 
 able sandy flats of Waterloo ? Waterloo, called by 
 courtesy a sea-bathing place; and so it might be for 
 a Liliputian population which did not object to salt 
 water, or to scudding one mile across wet sands to 
 get to it, and another to get overhead in it. For 
 all that, it is not a bad place nor an ugly place, and 
 pleasant to run down to by rail for " a smell of the 
 sea," half a mile off. If by rare chance you happen 
 to catch the tide at high-water, as I did the other 
 day, and, for a few minutes, the leagues of sand be- 
 come sea, and the sea becomes a flood of silver, and 
 gold, and diamonds under the paly sunshine of a 
 December afternoon, why, then, Waterloo is not far 
 from being actually pretty. 
 
 Ay, even to an eye that hates flatness as it hates 
 what you please, and would object to living in 
 Paradise unless assured that it was not a level coun- 
 try. But, viewed with a pardoning pity, there is 
 
BROTHER JONATHAN'S PET. 181 
 
 something tolerable, and even interesting, in the 
 determined flatness of this region its leagues upon 
 leagues of satisfied monotony sea, sky, sand-hills 
 sand-hills, sea, and sky, in everlasting repetition ; 
 no foreground, no distance, no horizon, making you 
 feel something like the frog in the fairy tale " he 
 gaed on, and he gaed on, and he gaed on, till he 
 cam to the well o' the warld's end." You have a 
 conviction that you might find the "well o' the 
 warld's end" somewhere beyond if there be a be- 
 yond to them the sand-hills of Waterloo. 
 
 One variety it has, something alive and stirring 
 on the great expanse of uniformity the ships. 
 Generally there is a dreary look about ships out at 
 sea ; not passing and repassing busily, as at or near 
 a sea-port town, but peered at telescopically from 
 an idle shore. They glide so ghostly, silently, soli- 
 tarily, like unquiet souls adrift upon space un- 
 known dots upon the unknown sea, watched for a 
 little and speculated upon, then dropping down 
 over the horizon, and vanishing you know not 
 where. 
 
 But at Waterloo the ships are not spectres. You 
 have there, softened into picturesque form, the full 
 benefit of the Mersey commerce, the " flocks" of 
 sailing-vessels outward or homeward bound, the 
 long fairy -like threads of smoke cast across the ho- 
 rizon by innumerable passenger steam-boats ; and 
 when some fine "liner" passes up or down Chan- 
 
182 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 nel, she sometimes comes near enough for you to 
 hear the distant whir- whir of her machinery above 
 the almost equally distant murmur of the sea; you 
 watch her great bulk as contrasted with all other 
 steamers, wonder what she is, and where on earth 
 she is going to. 
 
 I thus stood watching a big steamer making her 
 way not ghostily, but very noisily, like a stylish 
 lady marching majestically on, in considerable hur- 
 ry, but having no small opinion of herself up the 
 river toward Liverpool. With her long high hulk 
 far out of the water, her enormous paddle-wheels, 
 and her low masts all dressed with flags, she made 
 a sufficiently prominent object between me and the 
 sun to catch the notice even of a lazy landlubber, 
 to whose unpracticed eye every thing from a lighter 
 to a man-of-war was a " ship," and nothing more. 
 
 And so, when finally she steamed out of sight 
 into that misty forest of masts to which the Mersey 
 narrows above Bootle, and I had taken my saunter 
 over the sand-hills, the big steamer still lingered 
 sufficiently in my mind for me to make a careless 
 remark concerning her when I reached home. At- 
 tention was roused immediately. 
 
 " A 'big' steamer? Very big, was she? Pad- 
 dles or screw ?" 
 
 After a great effort of nautical memory, I replied 
 decisively, " Paddles. 77 
 
 " Long hulk ? High out of water ? 77 
 
183 
 
 u Very high in fact, with her low masts, I might 
 almost say clumsy.' 7 
 
 " Clumsy ! Ah ! you know nothing. Why, she 
 was the Adriatic. You must actually have seen the 
 Adriatic /" 
 
 I humbly suggested that this fact, apparently so 
 overwhelming, and implying so great a privilege, 
 did not impart any information to my benighted 
 self; that except certain vague reminiscences of 
 the Doge of Venice, combined with that ever-memo- 
 rable riddle of, " What sea would you choose for 
 your bedchamber?" the Adriatic conveyed to me 
 no definite idea except a ship's name. 
 
 " Not know the Adriatic, the great American liner, 
 built to sail against our Persia hitherto the biggest 
 steamer afloat except the Leviathan.' 1 ' 1 (" Which 
 isn't afloat yet," I suggested, " and never may be.") 
 " Why, the Adriatic is Brother Jonathan's last pet; 
 meant to beat us all hollow got up regardless of 
 expense furnished like a palace. And her engines 
 they boast that her engines are the grandest ever 
 manufactured : I'd like to have a look at them!" 
 
 Here the professional mind became absorbed, at 
 times giving vent to its ecstatic meditations thus: 
 
 " Only think, 2800 horse-power so I've heard. 
 What cylinders ! what boilers ! Oh, to see her pad- 
 dles working!" (I hinted I had heard them, and 
 they made a tolerable noise.) " Of course they did. 
 What a sight she must have been coming up the 
 
184 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 river! I wish I had had the sense to run down 
 to the landing-stage: it was crammed with people 
 watching her. She has been expected ever since 
 spring, and this is her first voyage. You are sure 
 you saw her?" 
 
 " Yes;" and I began to plume myself on the fact 
 accordingly. 
 
 " She hasn't beat us yet, though ; she was a day 
 or two overdue perhaps her engines were too new 
 to work. She and the Persia will have a nice race 
 for it back again, for they both sail for New York 
 next week. Won't the captains clap on steam and 
 go ahead, rather! I wonder which will beat! I 
 hope, not the Yankee." 
 
 Here the British mind became excited and enthu- 
 siastic. It certainly was exciting to think of this 
 racing on a grand scale, with iron steeds of from 
 2000 to 3000 horse-power, and the race-course the 
 wide Atlantic. As for the stakes a few hundred 
 lives, more or less, to say nothing of money and 
 property these seemed supernumerary trifles. 
 
 " I should like to go aboard of her, and get a look 
 at her engines," was the prevailing sentiment of the 
 next day or two, till it came at last triumphant 
 possibility! to, "Should you like to go aboard of 
 her?" 
 
 Could a British woman resist such an invitation 
 domestic, following that of the Yankee captain to an 
 enlightened British public? which an enlightened 
 
BROTHER JONATHAN'S PET. 185 
 
 British public had taken advantage of, and, in the 
 most amiable manner, had gone by thousands in 
 river-steamers and rowing-boats, and all sorts of 
 crafts, to examine our beautiful enemy as she lay 
 off Eock Ferry, alongside her rival the Persia, dur- 
 ing two December days. 
 
 You would not have thought it was December, 
 though, as we paced up and down the landing- 
 stages, that great trysting- place, whence, as has 
 been proved from accurate data, 40,000 people cross 
 the Mersey every day, and the whole population of 
 Liverpool crosses in the course of a week. The 
 new landing-stage, especially, forms an admirable 
 promenade of a thousand yards long, with one tri- 
 fling objection the bridges which connect it with 
 the quay are so short, that at low-water they slope 
 in an angle of forty-five degrees, down which an 
 adventurous truck sometimes darts to every body's 
 imminent danger. Once a commercial traveler's 
 gig, in going to be put on board some steamer, per- 
 formed that feat with such an impetus that it dashed 
 right across the landing-stage, and popped into the 
 river, whence it had to be fished out again, some wit 
 recommending the owner " to bait with a horse." 
 
 To - day, being nearly high - water, no such acci- 
 dent diverted the incessantly changing swarm of 
 all sorts of people which makes a Liverpool crowd 
 a perpetual study landsmen and seamen, big coun- 
 try farmers, men on 'Change, thin wiry Yankees, 
 
186 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 semi-gentlemanly bearded Jews, foreign sailors and 
 sea-captains, with olive faces and gold ear-rings; 
 w T omen, too, of all sorts from the handsome, over- 
 dressed "Lancashire witches," to the grimy old 
 Irishwoman, a pipe in her mouth, and a load of 
 herrings on her head, perfuming her whole route as 
 she passes. A selection from these filled the Eock 
 Ferry-boat as we slowly steamed away up the river 
 to the immortal tune of may our transatlantic 
 brethren appreciate the compliment ! Bobbing 
 around around. 
 
 It was an exquisite afternoon full of that quiet, 
 all-permeating sunshine which, when you do get 
 it, makes a December day the pleasantest of any 
 for sight-seeing, The air was so clear you could 
 have counted every window in the houses along 
 either shore; and the vessels, as we passed them 
 by, seemed to stand up spar by spar, and rope by 
 rope, cut out sharply against the cloudless sky. 
 They seemed to rne all alike ; but some of our party 
 talked learnedly of " schooner-rigged," " brig-rig- 
 ged," " clippers," etc.; had apparently a personal 
 acquaintance with every ship on the river; fought 
 energetically over the sailing merits of the James 
 Baines and the Maggie something or other and 
 which had been the shortest passage ever made be- 
 tween here and Australia. They pointed out, a 
 short distance astern, a vessel small enough she 
 seemed with her decks crowded, and lines of cab- 
 
BROTHER JONATHAN'S PET. 187 
 
 bages hanging to "her lower rigging, being towed 
 out by one of those sturdy little steam-tugs. 
 
 " She's an emigrant-ship, bound for Australia." 
 
 " They'll be singing Cheer, Boys, Cheer" said one 
 who knew all about it, " at least for the first hour or 
 two. Poor fellows! they'll need to sing it pretty 
 often between Liverpool and Melbourne." 
 
 And just then the echo of a faint dreary " Hur- 
 rah !" came over the water, as if the emigrants were 
 toying hard to bid any body and every body a jolly 
 good-by, and start with a good grace for the "new 
 <md happy land." 
 
 Of course, the earth must be covered and civil- 
 ized ; and those who find Europe too full to hold 
 them are right to go forth into a new land, to re- 
 plenish and subdue it; but to any with strong 
 home -instincts, who feel that if native land held 
 not a tie they should still cling to the mere sod to 
 these an emigrant-ship is one of the very saddest 
 sights in the whole world sadder even than one 
 which met us shortly a boat pulled by ten boys 
 in regulation nautical costume. 
 
 " Ah ! that's the Akbar's boat, and there she is 
 lying just off the quarantine station. Look at those 
 lads, now ; how cheerily they pull, and what nice 
 faces they have! You would never think they 
 were all criminals." 
 
 No, certainly not round, rosy, honest, happy 
 faces as ever I beheld. And yet these were, every 
 
188 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 one of them belonging to what is called "the crim- 
 inal class" vagabonds, if not thieves, who, coming 
 under the lash of the law, had been sent, not to 
 prison, where reformation would have been hope- 
 less, but to this marine reformatory, where they are 
 kept in safe custody, educated, taught a trade, or 
 made sailors of. I do not know enough of this re- 
 formatory to write about it, but I know the sight 
 of these ten appled-faced lads, pulling away merrily 
 through the saltwater instead of skulking in a jail- 
 yard of the Akbar, rocking lazily, with long, in- 
 definite lines of boys' shirts flapping over her clean 
 decks and ornamenting her useless rigging, instead 
 of the stern stone walls of your model prison or 
 penitentiary, is a remembrance hopeful and pleas- 
 ant to any one who thinks at all of that great ques- 
 tion, to which no legislation has yet found an an- 
 swer: " What shall we do with our criminal class- 
 es?" 
 
 And now we came in sight of " Jonathan's Pet" 
 that is, we had been in sight for ever so long, but 
 my inexperienced eye had never detected her, or 
 distinguished her from half a dozen other "big 
 ships." 
 
 " Don't you see her ? lying beside that old- 
 fashioned, clumsy -built trader wonderful craft! 
 Would do actually sixteen knots in sixteen hours ! 
 ha ! ha !" and modern superiority laughed heartily 
 at the respectable " slow coach" which no doubt was 
 
BROTHER JONATHAN'S PET. 189 
 
 thought an astonishing ship in her day. " That's 
 the Persia to leeward, and there's the Adriatic. 
 How small she looks !" 
 
 This certainly was the first impression she gave. 
 To hear afterward of her real proportions 354 feet 
 in length, 32 feet broad, and 50 feet in depth, seem- 
 ed perfectly ridiculous. No doubt it is her exqui- 
 site symmetry that takes from the sense of size, and 
 makes her huge bulk look as graceful as a yacht. 
 Seen foreshortened, sitting on the water as lightly, 
 as airily as a swan on a stream, the slight clumsi- 
 ness of build which struck me when I saw her lon- 
 gitudinally, steaming up the river, was not visible 
 at all. 
 
 There are few things of man's handiwork more 
 beautiful than 'a ship afloat even a steamer; and 
 probably the Adriatic is one of the finest specimens 
 of ship-building extant. The eye revels in her har- 
 monious curves; not a line from stem to stern in 
 which Hogarth's " line of beauty and grace" does 
 not soothe and fascinate one's sense of form. She 
 is said to have been built after quite a new model, 
 of which the only other specimen is the United 
 States steam-frigate Niagara her shape being stu- 
 diously adapted to the course of the water when 
 cleft by the ship's prow. Her chief peculiarity is 
 the exceeding delicacy with which she tapers up to 
 this prow, which, from her very small bowsprit, ap- 
 pears almost like a sharp point. As one of our 
 
190 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 party said, u Slie looks as if after every voyage she 
 would have to sharpen her nose upon a grindstone." 
 When we neared her, and noticed how high she 
 stood out of the water, how the boat-loads of peo- 
 ple that kept crowding in seemed to be dispersed 
 over her decks of no more account than a stray 
 half-dozen or so, the impression of her size in- 
 creased. As our boat lay to, waiting to come along- 
 side, the learned of our company had opportunity 
 fully to criticise the points of Jonathan's Pet, which 
 they did with great gusto. I, unlearned and igno- 
 rant, could only gaze idly at a sociable party of sea- 
 gulls, which swam from under her bows, apparently 
 as tame and comfortable as a brood of ducks in a 
 pond, and then at this gigantic floating palace, which 
 had just made safely her first voyage. Her first 
 voyage ! As an ancient poet observes, 
 
 "We cherish all our firsts throughout our lives." 
 
 But Captain James West can it be he leaning over 
 the side, and giving polite orders that the ship's 
 ladder may be made as easy as possible for the as- 
 cent of ladies who have not been accustomed to 
 mount what looks like a fire-escape attached to a 
 third-floor window Captain James West must feel 
 truly thankful when he thinks of the Adriatic's first 
 voyage successfully over. The first of how many ? 
 Heaven only knows. 
 
 We were on board at last. Most people, in these 
 
BROTHER JONATHAN'S PET. 191 
 
 traveling clays, are familiar with the interior of the 
 magnificent ocean-steamers, where every luxury of 
 furniture, living and sleeping accommodation, is 
 provided for a fortunate passenger, subject only 
 to the slight drawbacks of sea-sickness, drowning, 
 burning, or blowing up. Those splendid cabins, all 
 velvet and mirrors, where you might have every 
 opportunity of becoming acquainted with your own 
 personal appearance between here and America 
 those dainty, tiny bed-chambers, so well lighted and 
 ventilated those long dinner-tables and the stew- 
 ard's pantry, where an intelligent but thin Yankee 
 stands, with an air half civil and half condescend- 
 ing " You may walk in, ladies ;" and watches with 
 a grand indifference our admiration of the beautiful 
 "crockery" and crystal, packed so ingeniously that 
 one imagines the fiercest hurricane of the Atlantic 
 could not crack a single wine-glass. Truly a voy- 
 age in the Adriatic would be exceedingly pleasant 
 if all things were warranted weather included to 
 be always as they appear when she lies in the Mer- 
 sey Eiver. 
 
 But her engines. The scientific mind evidently 
 thought every minute lost that was not spent in 
 the examination of her engines. So we hurriedly 
 ran through the passenger domains, first and second 
 class the second-class berths and cabins being, by 
 the way, uncommonly comfortable brushed past 
 the stewardess, whom, immersed in a pile of haber- 
 
192 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 dashery, we overheard giving a rnild order for " four 
 hundred and sixty pair of blankets!" paced rap- 
 idly from end to end of the upper or spar deck 
 peered down into the hold an awful cavern, fifty 
 feet in depth and finally made our way to the 
 engine-gallery. 
 
 Perhaps, of all human handiwork, there is noth- 
 ing grander than a fine piece of machinery, especial- 
 ly a steam-engine. I own to have been literally 
 awed at sight of this one this dumb monster of 
 shiny brass and dark solid iron, with its enormous 
 cylinders moulded as accurately as a silver flower- 
 bell ornamenting a tea-pot, and kept as bright as 
 the best housewife's best " family -plate ;" with its 
 crank after looking at which, as some one said, 
 the adjective " cranky" appeared an extraordinary 
 misuse of words and its piston-rod, that, moving 
 up and down, must look as terrible, remorseless, 
 and unswerving as the great arm of justice. 
 
 " Oh, to see it working !" was the sigh of enthusi- 
 astic professional appreciation : " with those eight 
 boilers, and those forty-eight furnaces, and all that 
 mass of machinery ! "Working working night and 
 day like a blind giant, who doesn't know what he 
 is, or why he is, or where he is going, but just goes 
 laboring on, till something or some one brings him 
 to a dead stop. Really, I think ive have a good 
 many points in common with a big steam-engine." 
 
 I hinted that we were not quite such irresponsi- 
 
BROTHER JONATHAN'S PET* 193 
 
 ble machinery ; that we at least knew the Hand 
 who built us and set us agoing. But contemplating 
 this great mass of inert matter, which a few breaths 
 of vapor would make all alive and instinct with 
 power for good or evil, set afloat on the wide ocean, ^ 
 where it became a mere atom of nothingness, yet 
 had to hold on its way, laboring in darkness, but 
 laboring ever verily, the steam-engine did seem 
 not very unlike us. 
 
 The " Novelty "Works, New York" so said a 
 brass inscription over its head have need to be 
 proud of this their magnificent monster, every inch 
 of which is as daintily finished as the workmanship 
 of a lady's watch. It is contrived, they say, with 
 great saving of space and economy of fuel, the 1400 
 tons of coal which it has to devour in a single voy- 
 age being considered quite a light provender. In 
 return, the quantity of fresh water which it pro- 
 duces by condensation of its steam supplies the ship 
 abundantly. All that seemed needed was that it 
 should manufacture its own gas; and various ad- 
 mirable schemes to that effect were started by our 
 party, wanting in only two qualities, practicability 
 and safety. It did strike a non-professional audi- 
 tor, whose two great terrors in life are gas and the 
 stormy ocean, that to be exposed to the perils of . 
 both would a little detract from the pleasures of 
 the trip ; but that idea was scouted contemptuously 
 by the rest of the party. No doubt those labyrinth- 
 
 I 
 
194 STUDIES FBOM LIFE. 
 
 ine passages of cabins, so exactly similar that the 
 owners must apparently find their berths by the 
 merest accident, will ere long be illuminated like 
 our streets and squares; and instead of "Douse the 
 glim," the word will be, " Turn off the meter." 
 
 Strange to think of that huge floating castle 
 quite a little town steaming on through the dark- 
 ness, with all its sleeping freight, of which even the 
 list of the crew reads as follows : " 1 commander, 
 4 mates, 1 surgeon, 1 purser, 4 quarter -masters, 
 
 2 carpenters, 1 boatswain, 36 seamen, 1 engineer, 
 
 3 assistants, 6 superintendents of fires and boilers, 
 
 4 oilers (!), 2 engineers' store-keepers, 24 firemen, 
 36 coal-passers, 1 steward, 3 assistants, 36 waiters, 
 3 stewardesses, 2 store-keepers, 1 bar-keeper, 1 bar- 
 ber, 1 chief cook, 1 assistant cook, 1 baker, 2 pastry- 
 cooks, 2 engineers 7 mess-men, 2 keepers of lamps 
 and oil, 1 hose-keeper." 
 
 And the safety of all, with indefinite passengers 
 besides, dependent, humanly speaking, on that one 
 head of the "one commander." It had need be a 
 sound head and a steady one, and deserves a com- 
 fortable berth to rest in which it evidently has, 
 judging by the elegant appearance of the captain's 
 state-rooms, into which we peered. 
 
 Then we wandered up and down desultorily, 
 wondering where on earth all this crew of 188, and 
 all the hundreds of visitors that we knew were on 
 board, had vanished to. The great ship had swal- 
 
BROTHER JONATHAN'S PET. 195 
 
 lowed them up, and they only appeared as stray 
 groups here and there, or solitary sailors leaning 
 over the side. No bustle, no confusion, and yet she 
 was to sail to-morrow. There could not be a great* 
 er proof of the huge size and admirable arrange- 
 ments of Brother Jonathan's Pet. 
 
 " Any one going back by the next boat?" Yes, 
 about 300 or so, who, appearing out of inconceiv- 
 able nooks, descended the ship's side, and crowded 
 the river-boat on every square foot which two hu- 
 man feet could take possession of. In five minutes 
 we had dropped astern, and saw the great hull of 
 the Adriatic gradually lessening to that slender 
 shape into which she dwindles at a very slight dis- 
 tance. As she lay with her stars and stripes stream- 
 ing against the still clear sky, and the red winter 
 sunset throwing its glow upon her great motionless 
 paddle-wheels, we heartily wished her good-speed 
 ay, even though our own Persia lay, a short space 
 off, pluming her feathers for the flight, for she was to 
 sail two days after, and as we repeated, "Wouldn't 
 her captain clap on steam, and run her, literally, to 
 within an inch of her life, rather than be beaten by 
 the Yankee!" 
 
 Happy, harmless rivalry ! As we watched the 
 two steamers lying so peacefully alongside, with 
 the fair evening light upon them both the sun 
 going down toward the other continent as grandly 
 as he had risen with us this morning, " making no 
 
196 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 step-bairns" between east and west one could not 
 help trusting that the Governor of all the kingdoms 
 of the earth would keep both the good ships safe, 
 and that fast sailing might be the only rivalry, the 
 only war between ourselves and Brother Jonathan. 
 
LITERARY GHOULS. 197 
 
 Citerarg 
 
 A PROTEST FROM THE OTHER WORLD. 
 
 I AM a dead author. 
 
 "What I wrote, or how I wrote it, whether well or 
 ill, is unimportant now: I dwell " in the land where 
 all things are forgotten." The reason why I am 
 permitted " again in complete steel" both as to pen 
 and heart to reappear in the mundane sphere, 
 through the medium of this work, will be obvious 
 in the following communication. How communi- 
 cated, by tapping, table-moving, or spirit-writing, 
 befits not me to say, and is irrelevant to the subject 
 under consideration. I will only solemnly attest 
 that the sole devil which has any hand in the 
 matter is the printer's. 
 
 I am dead. For me, no more the delays of pub- 
 lishers, the stupidity or ill-nature of reviewers, the 
 praise, blame, or curiosity of the public. Into " the 
 silent land," my works, whether 4to, 8vo, or 12mo, 
 happily do not follow me ; I shuffled them all off 
 with this mortal coil ; left them to take their chance 
 of surviving me ; and may their faults lie on them 
 as gently as library dust ! 
 
198 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 For my dust, that also is a secondary considera- 
 tion to me now ; yet I have a kindly feeling for 
 the relics of what often hampered me most terribly 
 during life. Occasionally I wander airily round a 
 certain suburban cemetery, to take an amused ob- 
 servation of a certain elegant vase, with a marble 
 laurel- wreath at top, and underneath an inscription 
 attesting my great literary merit, and the irrepara- 
 ble loss which I am to society. 
 
 Yet that inconsolable society is gradually ceas- 
 ing to name me, either in sympathy or admiration. 
 Shortly I shall be only remembered by a faithful 
 household or two as " our poor dear John.' 7 I am 
 not now ashamed of being plain " John," and should 
 be well content to see on the aforesaid picturesque 
 vase only that name and my surname, with the date 
 of my birth and death the sole facts of moment to 
 me now or perhaps some modern version of the 
 familiar old epitaph : 
 
 11 Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbeare 
 To digg y e dust encloased here : 
 Blest be y e man that spares these stones, 
 And curst be he that moves my bones.'* 
 
 Query? had Shakspeare any foreboding of, or did 
 he mean any occult reference to, a certain race of 
 literary ghouls, which in latter ages delight in ex- 
 huming, not the bodies, but the souls of dead au- 
 thors, who, unlike himself, are hapless enough to 
 leave behind them materials for biography ? For- 
 
LITERARY GHOULS. 199 
 
 tunate Will ! whose " second-best bed," left to thy 
 wife Anne, is the sole clew to thy matrimonial his- 
 tory whose few scribbled signatures are thy only 
 autographs extant who tookest no steps whatever 
 to make thy life known to posterity, but wast con- 
 tent to lie down and sleep by Avon side, leaving 
 only that sacred dust, and a few unconsidered trifles 
 of chiefly manuscript plays, which have secured for 
 thee an earthly immortality ! 
 
 It was reserved for the resurrectionists of modern 
 times to do worse than Shakspeare's curse depre- 
 cates to dig up, not the bones, but the memories 
 of the departed great, exposing them like mummies 
 under a glass case, sixpence a peep, namely, three 
 vols. 8vo, charged twopence each for perusal ; may 
 be had at any circulating library. After which, all 
 the critics in all the reviews and newspapers place 
 them on a sort of intellectual dissecting-table, where 
 they are lectured upon learnedly, and anatomized 
 limb by limb, muscle by muscle not at all out of 
 mere curiosity, oh dear no ! but simply for the good 
 of science and the benefit of mankind : a proceed- 
 ing vastly interesting and quite unobjectionable, 
 except for any who may chance to find as has 
 more than once been found some near relative or 
 beloved friend in the inanimate "subject" of Sur- 
 geon's Hall. 
 
 I am incited to express myself thus by being the 
 elected spokesman of a committee of ghosts, who, 
 
200 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 in so far as spirits can suffer wrong, save from the 
 sorrowful beholding of it, have been wronged in 
 this fashion since they left the mortal sphere. Al- 
 though to us, in our celestial Hades, all this clatter 
 about us 
 
 "No more disturbs our calm repose 
 Than summer evening's latest sigh 
 That shuts the rose," 
 
 still we deem it right, for truth's sake, that a voice 
 from the other world should convey our opinion on 
 the matter. 
 
 We abide where, it matters not, as space, like 
 time, belongs only to the flesh. We are often 
 drawn together, as congenial spirits are in life and 
 after ; and we converse sometimes of earthly mat- 
 ters, which we are aware of, for to be a spirit im- 
 plies to know. How, or how much we know, I shall 
 not explain, as you will all find it out for yourselves 
 at no distant day. We rarely speak of our own 
 books we have said our say, and done with it 
 but we sometimes discuss the books that have been 
 written upon us since our departure. 
 
 These are of every sort, from the humble one- 
 volume Remains, compiled by some affectionate 
 heart which deemed the loss as fatal for the world 
 as for itself, to the large and boastful Memoir of 
 somebody who was never heard of till he became a 
 biographee, solely, it would appear, for the glorifica- 
 tion of his biographer ; from the plain, honest Life, 
 
LITERARY GHOULS. 201 
 
 with nothing in it to chronicle except useful deeds 
 or scientific researches, and the pathetic Final Me- 
 morials, throwing light upon long-secret griefs and 
 ended labors, down to the heaps of Reminiscences, 
 Recollections, Journals, and Correspondences, piled up 
 like a cairn over some unfortunate of whom, after 
 all, the utmost that can be said is included in a verse 
 by one whose hint his biographer had much better 
 have taken : 
 
 " Once in the flight of ages past 
 
 There lived a man. And who was he? 
 Mortal, howe'er thy lot be cast, 
 That man resembled thee." 
 
 And all that need be told of him, which he has not 
 told of himself by writings or actions, the bard goes 
 on to say, 
 
 "Is this: There lived a man." 
 
 But these ghouls have no respect to the image of 
 man, either spiritually or corporeally. Alas for us 
 poor ghosts, they have dragged into the open day- 
 light all our mental and physical defects ; described 
 minutely our personality, living, and, in one or two 
 instances, the appearance of our poor corpses after 
 we were dead. Our vices, follies, sufferings, our 
 family secrets and domestic wrongs, have been alike 
 paraded before the world. Truths, half-truths, or 
 two half-truths so put together as to form a whole 
 falsehood, have been grubbed up in all directions, 
 and either dovetailed into a ground-work purely 
 l 2 
 
202 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 imaginary, or arranged into a mosaic of most charm- 
 ing pattern, with, the slight drawback that the de- 
 sign of it, and of our history, is entirely the work 
 of our ingenious biographer. 
 
 All this harms us not ; but we regard the matter 
 as something sad and strange, which may be harm- 
 ful to authors now living, who one day will in their 
 turn become ghosts and biographical subjects. 
 
 Thus, suppose we, who most of us passed our 
 sublunary existence like ordinary men and women; 
 wrote our books, and published them, certainly; but 
 for ourselves courted peace, privacy, and the medi- 
 tative life which all true authors love suppose we 
 had been aware that upon us, defunct, a greedy bi- 
 ographer would seize, rake up all our doings, undo- 
 ings, and misdoings ; record how we dressed, and 
 walked, and ate our dinners; jot down, in various 
 incorrect forms, which we have no power to set 
 right, every careless or foolish word we said, with 
 our apparent motive for saying it; lure from weak, 
 faithless, or indifferent friends our most private let- 
 ters, written, perhaps, as others beside the luckless 
 genus irritabile do write letters, on the impulse of 
 the moment, or under the influence of some acci- 
 dental mood ; call upon all our kindred and ac- 
 quaintance one half of whom knew little of. us, 
 and the other half never understood us at all for 
 every possible reminiscence concerning us. Alack ! 
 alack ! had we suspected this, what a living death 
 
LITERARY GHOULS. 203 
 
 of apprehension, annoyance, and mistrust would 
 have been ours ! And for the result ? We should 
 either have doubted our nearest and dearest, and 
 retired in disgust from the impertinent world, to 
 leave our bones mouldering unmolested in some 
 African desert or American cave, or we should have 
 carefully arranged our whole life with a view to 
 posthumous publication. We should never have 
 made a remark without considering how it would 
 look in Srnith-iana. We should have combed our 
 hair, tied our neckcloth, selected our gowns and 
 gloves strictly for the benefit of posterity. Our 
 very ledgers, house -accounts, and washing -books 
 would have been penned with an eye to autographs. 
 We should have eaten, drunk, and slept like flies 
 under a tumbler-glass, waiting to be put in amber, 
 or like strange beasts, conscious that their destiny 
 is merely from the Zoological Gardens to the Brit- 
 ish Museum. Nay, those of us whom a beneficent 
 Providence removed from the world before the de- 
 velopment of the present biography mania would 
 have trembled lest even on the slender data now 
 attainable concerning them some literary Professor 
 Owen might put them together, and lecture on them 
 in the character of extinct animals. 
 
 This last case is the least reprehensible. When 
 his own generation has died out, and no living be- 
 ing can be wounded by any revelations concerning 
 him ; when an after-age has decided his permanent 
 
204 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 position in letters, and become at once less preju- 
 diced, and more just with regard to both his faults 
 and his virtues, then the world has some right to 
 know the main facts of an author's personal history, 
 at least so far as to discover whether his life corre- 
 sponded with his works, which makes the works 
 themselves doubly valuable. But that one whose 
 whole or chief intercourse with the public has been 
 by the pen who has never put himself forward in 
 any of those positions which necessarily make a 
 man public property, should be seized upon as such 
 the minute the breath leaves him, for the entertain- 
 ment of the world, is a proceeding the justice of 
 which is certainly debatable. 
 
 On the other hand, let us suppose a case in which 
 the books left behind are the one valuable residuum 
 of a worthless life, during which the unhappy au- 
 thor has 
 
 " Known the right, and yet the wrong pursued ;" 
 
 a life wherein, from weakness, wickedness, or folly, 
 his career as a man furnishes no possible example 
 to posterity, except to wonder how he ever could 
 have written as beautifully as he did. 
 
 Take, for instance, Hermion, whose worldly name, 
 did I give it, would be recognized as one for years 
 incensed with most odorous idolatry. What was 
 Hermion? A wild, handsome 3 7 oung aristocrat, 
 stuffed full with that passionate egotism and inordi- 
 nate love of approbation which is the bane of many 
 
LITEKAKY GHOULS. 205 
 
 second-rate, of a few even first-rate geniuses. Con- 
 sequently obnoxious to most men though, because 
 they only beheld the fairer side of his character, 
 adored by numerous women ; till, whipped on one 
 cheek, caressed on the other, and maddened within 
 by all the temptations of the world, the flesh, and 
 the devil, this poet, this demigod, who lived not 
 long enough to know himself a fool, ay, and some- 
 what of a villain to boot, was discovered after his 
 death to be both. 
 
 And how ? Because there was no one to say " he 
 is dead, and he shall be buried ; buried altogether, 
 leaving to posterity only the best and noblest part 
 of him his writings." Therefore, over his corpse 
 biographers began to swarm like flies. A fashion- 
 able friend, for fear of other fashionable friends sup- 
 pressing his autobiography, which the man himself 
 had carefully written, and which might at least 
 from unwilling internal evidence have had one 
 value truth puts forth a garbled Life. A senti- 
 mental, kindly, shallow lady - acquaintance details 
 his Conversations; other acquaintances, denomina- 
 ted "friends" but he could not have had one real 
 friend in the world, this poor Hermion, who loved 
 only himself they too, in successive years, throng 
 the press, dilating on his private history and man- 
 ner of life how he starved for fear of obesity, how 
 he wrote noble poetry of nights, and talked slang 
 and ribaldry by day ; how the worshiped bard of 
 
206 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 half the century was in reality, when you came to 
 be intimate with him, a selfish, conceited, parsimo- 
 nious, narrow-minded, vacillating, irritable fop; 
 which in degree he was, yet not void of some re- 
 deemable qualities ; and an undoubtedly great poet ; 
 for poets are but men. Was it for his friends to 
 hang him up on a kind of glorified gibbet for every 
 crow to peck at, and every passer-by to shudder or 
 sneer ? And will their doing so advantage any hu- 
 man being? Will it not, in those who have not 
 attained the large vision of us immortals, create a 
 belief that all poets must be weak, puppyish, ego- 
 tistical, because this poet was so? Will they not 
 be led to think that poetry itself must be a beautiful 
 lie, because a man could sit in the quiet dead of 
 night, writing out of the inmost depths of his na- 
 ture, his best, truest self, things worthy of it and 
 him, yet rise up next day, put on his weak, foul, 
 conceited self, and persuade short-sighted people 
 that that was the real Hermion after all? Alas! 
 for this man, who, like many another man, was tor- 
 mented with two warring natures in his heart ; he 
 lived not long enough to 
 
 "Throw away the worser half of it, 
 And live the purer with the other half." 
 
 And so he died; and a fine carrion-feast has he 
 made for biographers ever since. 
 
 So has his contemporary, who, entering among 
 
LITERAKY GHOULS. 207 
 
 us ghosts, strangely surprised to find himself im- 
 mortal, 
 
 " Came wandering by, 
 
 A shadow like an angel, with bright hair 
 
 Dabbled in blood" 
 
 and salt sea-brine. 
 
 A sapient journal, whose comments on us depart- 
 ed often amuse us mightily in the upper sphere, as- 
 serts, noticing the last of the numerous memorials 
 of Spiridion, " that it supplies reasons why a com- 
 plete life of him never can be, perhaps never ought 
 to be written." 
 
 I put it to the conscience of mortals whether "a 
 complete life" of any human being can be written 
 except by the pen of the recording angel? 
 
 If it be so difficult for a biographer to get at the 
 simplest, most patent facts in his author's career, 
 how shall he discover the life in full, inner and out- 
 er, and paint it clearly, honestly, capably cramped 
 by no prejudices, hesitating at no revelations, both 
 able and willing to show forth undisguisedly the 
 whole man ? How, even if he wished, can he do 
 this, unless he were the man's alter ego, sufficiently 
 understanding all his peculiarities to place his char- 
 acter in its true light before the world ? 
 
 And w r as there ever, in his lifetime, any alter ego 
 who thus thoroughly understood Spiridion ? 
 
 Unaccountable as it may be, it is no less true, 
 that most poets are all their days more or less chil- 
 
208 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 dren, and want taking care of like children. The 
 mens divinior seems to unfit them partially for the 
 hard necessities of life, unless, as is sometimes 
 would it were oftener! the case, their moral con- 
 scientiousness is strong enough to force them to ac- 
 quire qualities not innate or coexistent with what 
 is termed " the poetic temperament," namely, pru- 
 dence, forethought, common sense that solid wis- 
 dom which, in the sum of life, outweighs all genius. 
 
 This Spiridion never had. Consequently, the 
 busy world, deep in counter and merchandise, 
 houses and lands, thrusts its hands into its pockets, 
 and laughs over the picture of the beardless youth 
 and his baby -wife running from place to place, in- 
 tending at each charming spot to stay " forever." 
 Afterward, when, with a kind of childish ignorance 
 rather than wickedness, he had broken laws, creeds, 
 and women's hearts, it turns disgusted from the poor 
 poet who lives contentedly a life as idle and fickle 
 as that of a meadow butterfly, and, with one or two 
 sad exceptions, almost as harmless. Utterly incom- 
 prehensible to any respectable gentleman coming 
 home at 6 P.M. precisely to his splendid meal is 
 the portrait drawn of our Spiridion, standing read- 
 ing a whole day long with his untested cold meat 
 beside him, then starting with a girlish blush, " Bless 
 me, I must have forgotten my dinner !" 
 
 And worse than incomprehensible altogether 
 hateful, and anathema maranatha, is the daring bias- 
 
LITERARY GHOULS. 209 
 
 phemy of his indignant youth, when, blindly con- 
 founding the Christianity of what was then a mere 
 formalist Church with the Christianity of the Lord 
 Jesus, he dubbed himself atheist, to show his abhor- 
 rence of both. Poor Spiridion ! yet any one study- 
 ing his life, which, with all its faults, was so pure, 
 unselfish, generous so essentially the Christlike life 
 of love making even his enemies love him as soon 
 as they came to know him, can not but acknowl- 
 edge that many a saintly bishop has been, practical- 
 ly, Jess of a Christian than he. 
 
 But why write his life at all ? Why expose the 
 miserable arcana of a luckless marriage a dis- 
 orderly home which many a man has to suffer, 
 though he is fortunately not written about. Why 
 describe every writhing of the diseased restlessness 
 and melancholy that constitute a phase of mental 
 development which almost every sensitive nature is 
 doomed to pass through during youth, until the fe- 
 vers and despairs gradually wear themselves out, 
 and the individual looks back on his old self 
 which, having happily been outlived, has never 
 been chronicled with a curious mixture of won- 
 der and pity, that makes him tolerant and hopeful 
 for all others going through the same ordeal. But, 
 while his poor, young, tender feet were yet in the 
 midst of those red-hot plowshares, Spiridion drop- 
 ped and died. 
 
 Yet understand us: we gbbsts do not wish to 
 
210 STUDIES FEOM LIFE. 
 
 lay an embargo on all biographies, thereby annihi- 
 lating the natural wish of the human heart to be 
 remembered after death, and causing the worth and 
 beauty of good men's histories to be indeed 
 
 "Interred with their bones." 
 
 Not so. Every thing that is great and noble, vir- 
 tuous and heroic in any author's life in the life of 
 any man or woman by all means, after a decent 
 time has elapsed, let it be faithfully related, for the 
 comfort, instruction, and example of later genera- 
 tions. The world has a right to hear and exact 
 such chronicles of its generations gone by. 
 
 But let us be chronicled, not as authors because 
 we have written a book or so worth reading, but 
 because we have lived a life worth remembering, 
 the story of which will have a beneficial influence 
 on lives yet to come. If any incense poured upon, 
 or saintly odors arising from our mortal dust can 
 reach and delight us in our immortality, it must be 
 thus to know that neither our doings nor our suf- 
 ferings have been altogether in vain. And for all 
 concerning us that was purely personal, in no way 
 differing from the rest of our species which can 
 neither " point a moral" nor "adorn a tale," but 
 only minister to an idle and prurient curiosity in 
 charity's name, let it be buried with us. 
 
 Here, in this abode of calm, where the strongest 
 puff of fame can not send a single ripple across the 
 
LITERARY GHOULS. 211 
 
 sea of eternity, we ghosts wish, it were better under- 
 stood that, however great our writings, we ourselves 
 were but human, and no more was to be expected 
 of us than struggling humanity can achieve ; that 
 our genius was an accidental quality, in no way 
 exempting us from the temptations, any more than 
 exonerating us from the duties of our kind-; that, 
 if we erred, it was not our genius, but our miserable 
 human nature that overcame us, as it does other 
 men. We claim for our memories neither more 
 nor less than the immunities granted to others not 
 authors namely, that, except for some great benefit 
 to the human race, you have no more right to drag 
 a man's history, fair or foul, out of the merciful 
 shadows of the tomb, than you have to dig up and 
 sell his dead body, to be exhibited in a penny peep- 
 show at Bartholomew Fair. The true manner of 
 dealing with the dead at all times Shakspeare seems 
 to indicate when he makes Queen Katherine say of 
 Wolsey : 
 
 " Yet thus far, Griffiths, yive me leave to speak him, 
 And yet with chanty." 
 
 She would not criticise her bitterest enemy, after he 
 was no more, without the apology, " Give me leave" 
 It would be well if some biographers I could name 
 had been as tender. 
 
 And this brings me to speak a word on the part 
 of some gentle ghosts among us, who, inasmuch as 
 women naturally shrink from publicity more than 
 
212 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 men, have been the more sorely aggrieved. I refer 
 not to those who, conscious of living always in the 
 public eye, designedly left their Diaries, etc., behind 
 them, elegantly and artistically arranged a little 
 couleur de rose maybe on the principle that 
 
 "One would not look quite frightful when one's dead,'' 
 
 but still vastly amusing ; and no doubt an appreci- 
 ative public made itself very merry over these dead 
 women, whose life was a perpetual pose plastique, 
 and who took care to die in the most graceful of 
 attitudes. They have had their desire, though every 
 one of them may be wise enough to be ashamed of 
 it now. 
 
 But for others who lived naturally, painfully, 
 finding the burden of existence quite hard enough 
 of itself, without having to consider how it would 
 appear as a picture for future biographers ; who ar- 
 ranged no materials, kept no intentional records, 
 and evidently had not the slightest notion of ever 
 being made into a book, the case is widely dif- 
 ferent. 
 
 The generality of female authors do not desire, 
 living or dead, to be made into a public spectacle. 
 Something in womanhood instinctively revolts from 
 it, as it would from caressing its dearest friends at 
 a railway station, or performing its toilet in the open 
 air. "Women's domestic ways, actions, and emotions 
 are so much more demonstrative, and, at the same 
 
LITERARY GHOULS. 213 
 
 time, more reticent than men's, that to tear the veil 
 from their lives seems a far more cruel wrong. 
 
 And in many instances even to accomplish it is 
 most difficult. The true key to feminine nature is 
 so delicate, so hidden, that it is all but impossible 
 to be found. Thus, in many female biographies 
 lately written, one feels by instinct that not one 
 half of the life is unfolded that much which 
 would reconcile jarring mysteries, and harmonize 
 the whole, has either never been discovered, or, if 
 discovered, is necessarily suppressed. Whether or 
 not it be so with men there probably never is 
 written an absolutely true life of any woman, for 
 the simple reason that the intricacies of female na- 
 ture are incomprehensible except to a woman ; and 
 any biographer of real womanly feeling, if even 
 she discovered, would never dream of publishing 
 them. 
 
 Take, for example, one of the most touching me- 
 moirs of modern times, the subject of which was a 
 shy, timid, suffering being, almost unknown, except 
 through her books, until she died. Death, waiting 
 but for the crowning of a long, sad life with one 
 drop of happiness, took her suddenly away in the 
 prime of her years. Now the public thirsts with 
 curiosity about her; now publishers foresee that 
 any fragment concerning her is sure to sell ; now 
 her few friends and fewer acquaintance discover 
 that they had entertained an angel unawares, and 
 
214: STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 eagerly rack their memories for all possible memo- 
 rials of her. 
 
 So a Life is written, carefully, delicately, and hon- 
 estly, with due regard to the feelings of the living 
 and the cherished memory of the dead; written 
 doubtless as conscientiously as such a life could 
 possibly have been written ; but it ought never to 
 have been written at all; for what is the result 
 of it? 
 
 A creature so reserved by nature that the ordi- 
 nary attention of society to a " celebrated author" 
 was abhorrent to her, making her shrink with actual 
 pain, is, after death, exposed openly to the world; 
 her innermost thoughts, words, and actions display- 
 ed; her letters, written in the anguish of religious 
 doubt, or family affliction, or intolerable bodily pain, 
 printed and published for the amusement of every 
 careless or sarcastic eye; her books analyzed, in 
 order to apportion fictitious characters among real 
 originals, and try to extract from the imagination 
 the history of the heart. Every misfortune, error, 
 and disgrace of her kindred, which you feel sure 
 the woman herself would have concealed to the last 
 extremity of sacred endurance, is trumpeted out to 
 a harsh, cynical, or indifferent world, of which the 
 tender-hearted portion can but feel instinctively one 
 emotion: "For charity's sake for the dead wom- 
 an's sake leave the whole history untold. Cover 
 it up ; let her name and her books live, but let her 
 life and its sorrows be heard of no more." 
 
LITERARY GHOULS. 215 
 
 For, after all, what moral is gained from it? a 
 chronicle so sad, so incomplete, that apparently it 
 does not "justify the ways of God to man." To 
 mortals, on whom its page closed with that last piti- 
 ful sigh of hers " Am I going to die, when we 
 have been so happy ?" it can administer no pos- 
 sible lesson except of dull, hopeless endurance. 
 Many similar lives there are, of which we on the 
 other side the grave are alone permitted to see the 
 binding up of the broken web the solution of all 
 dark mysteries in the clear light of eternity ; but 
 such lives ought never to be written. It is impos- 
 sible that any human being can write them fairly 
 and fully, and to attempt doing so incompletely is 
 profanity toward ghosts and men, as well as toward 
 the Father of both. 
 
 " I would not have used any living creature as 
 some of my dear friends have used me,' 7 said, in the 
 soft utterance of the unknown world, this gentle 
 ghost of whom I am speaking ; " I would not, even 
 had my correspondent been so foolish as to put her 
 heart in her letters, have after her death put it also 
 into print. I would have done with all her inti- 
 mate correspondence as a friend of mine, estranged, 
 yet soon to be regained, is wise and tender enough 
 to do with hers burned it. All the publishers and 
 public in the world hammering at my doors should 
 never have torn my friend's secrets out of my heart. 
 I would have had all things done for her, dead, ex- 
 
216 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 actly as would have been done by her, living. Not 
 one breath of the idle curiosity which she hated 
 during life should have been allowed to expend it- 
 self over her tomb. " But it harms not me," said 
 the silver voice, speaking calmly, as if of another 
 person, and breaking up the circle from which I, 
 the appointed delegate, give this communication. 
 "My body sleeps in peace among my moorlands, 
 and I live here in the one true heart that loved 
 me." 
 
 And then as one of the greatest of poets, still in 
 the flesh, tries to describe, painting the world which 
 he knows not yet, but shall know 
 
 "Her face 
 
 Glowed as I looked at her. 
 She locked her lips she left me where I stood. 
 * Glory to God, ' she sang, and passed afar, 
 Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood 
 Toward the morning star." 
 
ABOUT MOTHERS-IN-LAW. 217 
 
 IN a recent discussion on the subject, it was sug- 
 gested as an argument in favor of a man's marrying 
 his deceased wife's sister, that, in such a case, he 
 would have but one mother-in-law. The general 
 laugh which greeted this remark proved how strong 
 is the prejudice against that luckless relationship, 
 upon which has been immemorially expended all 
 the sarcasm of the keen-witted, all the pointless 
 abuse of the dull. 
 
 Dare any bold writer, taking the injured and un- 
 popular side, venture a few words in defense of the 
 mother-in-law ? 
 
 Unfortunate individual ! the very name presents 
 her, in her supposed character, to the mental eye, 
 a lady, stout, loud-voiced, domineering ; or else thin, 
 snappish, small, but fierce, prone to worrying and 
 lamenting; either so overpoweringly genteel and 
 grand that "my son's wife," poor little body, shrinks 
 into a trembling nobody by her own fireside, or so 
 vulgar that u my daughter's 'usband" finds it neces- 
 sary politely to ignore her, as completely as she 
 does her h's and her grammar. 
 
 These two characters, slightly varied, constitute 
 K 
 
218 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 the prominent idea current of a mother-in-law. 
 How it originated is difficult to account for; or why 
 a poor lady, regarded as harmless enough until her 
 children marry, should immediately after that event 
 be at once elevated to such a painful pedestal of 
 disagreeableness. 
 
 Books, perhaps, may be a little to blame for this, 
 as in the matter of step-mothers of whom we may 
 have somewhat to say anon and surely that au- 
 thor is to blame who, by inventing an unpleasant 
 generalized portrait, brings under opprobrium a 
 whole claSvS. Thus Thackeray may have done 
 more harm than he was aware of to many a young 
 couple who find " the old people" rather trying, as 
 old folks will be, by his admirably painted, horrible, 
 but happily exceptional character of Mrs. Mackenzie. 
 He does not reflect that his sweet little silly Rosie, 
 as well as the much-injured wives among these in- 
 dignant young couples, might in time have grown 
 up to be themselves mothers-in-law. 
 
 But that is quite another affair. Mrs. Henry, 
 weeping angry tears over her little Harry, because 
 the feeding and nurturing of that charming child 
 has been impertinently interfered with by Henry's 
 mother, never looks forward to a day when she her- 
 self might naturally feel some anxiety over the 
 bringing up of Harry 's eldest born. Mr. Jones, be- 
 ginning to fear that Mrs. Jones's maternal parent 
 haunts his house a good deal, and has far too strong 
 
ABOUT MOTHERS-IN-LAW. 219 
 
 an influence over dear Celia, never considers how 
 highly indignant he should feel if Mrs. Jones and 
 himself were to be grudged hospitality by missy's 
 future spouse little, laughing, fondling missy, 
 whom he somehow can not bear to think of parting 
 with, at any time, to any husband whatsoever ; nay, 
 is conscious that, should the hour and the man ever 
 arrive, papa's first impulse toward the hapless young 
 gentleman would be a strong desire to kick him 
 down stairs. 
 
 Thus, as the very foundation of a right judgment 
 in this, as in most other questions, it is necessary to 
 put one's self mentally on the obnoxious side. 
 
 Few will deny that the crisis in parenthood when 
 its immediate duties are ceasing and, however suf- 
 ficient its pleasures are to the elders, they are no 
 longer so to the youngsters, already beginning to 
 find the nest too small, to plume their wings and 
 desire to fly must be a very trying time for all 
 parents; bitter exceedingly to the many whose 
 wedlock has turned out less happy than it prom- 
 ised, and between whom the chief bond that remains 
 is the children ; nor without its pain even to the 
 most united couple, who, through all the full years 
 of family cares and delights, have had resolution 
 enough to anticipate the quiet empty years when, 
 all the young ones having gone away, they too 
 must once more be content solely with one another. 
 Happy indeed that father and mother whose conju- 
 
220 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 gal love has. so kept its prior place that they are 
 not afraid even of this the peaceful, shadowy time 
 before they both pass away into the deeper peace 
 of eternity. 
 
 Nevertheless, the first assumption of their new 
 position is difficult. Yonng wives do not sufficient- 
 ly consider how very hard it must be for a fond 
 mother to lose, at once and forever, her office as 
 primary agent in her son's welfare, if not his happi- 
 ness ; to give him over to a young lady, whom per- 
 haps she has seen little of, and that little is not too 
 satisfactory. For young people in love will be self- 
 ish and foolish, and neglectful of old ties in favor of 
 the new ; and almost every young man, prior to his 
 marriage, contrives, without meaning it, to wound 
 his own relations in a thousand insignificant things, 
 every one of which is reflected back upon his un- 
 lucky betrothed, producing an involuntary jealousy, 
 a tenaciousness about small slights, a cruel quick- 
 sightedness over petty faults. All this is bitterly 
 hard for the poor young stranger in the family, un- 
 less, having strength and self-control enough to re- 
 member that " a good son makes a good husband," 
 she uses all her influence, even in courting-days, to 
 keep him firm to his affection and duty. Also, her 
 own claim being, although the higher and closer, 
 much the newer, the more dearly she loves him, the 
 more careful she will be, by no over-intrusion of 
 rights already sufficiently obvious, to jar against the 
 
ABOUT MOTHERS-IN-LAW. 221 
 
 rights or wound the feelings of others who love him 
 too, especially his mother, who has loved him all 
 his life. 
 
 Surely this fact alone ought to make any young 
 woman who is generously and faithfully attached 
 to her husband feel a peculiar tenderness toward 
 the woman who bore him, nursed him, cherished 
 him, if a woman in any way tolerable or worthy 
 of love. Even if not, the faults of the husband's 
 mother ought to be viewed more leniently than 
 those of other people. She must have had so much 
 to bear with, as the younger generation will find 
 out when the third generation arrives. Nay, the 
 common cares and sufferings of mere maternity 
 might well be sufficient, in another mother's eyes, 
 to constitute an unalienable claim of respect due 
 from herself toward " grandmamma." 
 
 "But," says the incredulous reader, "this is a 
 purely ideal view of the subject. Practically, what 
 can you do with the old lady who comes worrying 
 you in your domestic affairs, criticising your house- 
 keeping, dictating to you about the management of 
 your nursery, finally cutting you to the heart by 
 hinting that you don't take half care enough of 
 4 that poor dear fellow, who never looks so well 
 now as he did before he was married.' " 
 
 Yes, poor young wife! it must be owned you 
 have a good deal to bear on your side also. 
 
 Daughters and sons-in-law being always expected 
 
222 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 to be perfect the daughter or son by blood being 
 of course naturally so in the parental eyes causes 
 of necessity a few painful disenchantments on the 
 part of the mother-in-law. She forgets that she 
 must take her share of the difficulties which are 
 sure to arise so long as human beings are a little 
 less than angels, and earth is not a domestic para- 
 dise. She had best early reconcile herself to the 
 truth painful, yet just and natural that she has 
 no longer the first right to her child. When once 
 a young pair are married, parents, as well as rela- 
 tives and friends, must leave them to make the best 
 of one another. They two are bound together in- 
 dissolubly, and no interference of a third party can 
 ever mend what is irremediable; while even in 
 things remediable, any strong external influence is 
 quite as likely to do harm as good. 
 
 A wife, be she ever so young, ignorant, or foolish, 
 must be sole mistress in her husband's house and 
 not even her own parents or his have any business 
 to interfere with her, except by an occasional opin- 
 ion, or a bit of affectionate counsel, which is often 
 better not given until distinctly asked. 
 
 And in the strangeness, the frequent solitude, the 
 countless difficulties of newly-married life, no doubt 
 this advice would be eagerly sought for had it not 
 been overmuch intruded at first. A girl, taken out 
 of her large, merry family, to spend long, lonely 
 days in an unfamiliar house, be it ever so dear, 
 
ABOUT MOTHERS-IN-LAW. 223 
 
 or entering, inexperienced, upon all sorts of family 
 cares, would frequently be thankful to her very 
 heart for the wisdom and kindness of a new moth- 
 er, if only the mother had early taken pains to win 
 that confidence which, to be given, requires to be 
 won. For neither love nor trust comes by instinct; 
 and in most of these connections by marriage, where 
 the very fact of strangers being suddenly brought 
 together, and desired to like one another, obstinate- 
 ly inclines them the other way, this love and trust, 
 if long in coming, frequently never comes at all. 
 Very civil may be the outward relations of the par- 
 ties, but heart-warmth is not there. It is always 
 "my husband's family" not "my family;" my 
 "daughter's husband" or ".my son's wife" never 
 "my son" and u my daughter." The loving patri- 
 archial union, which both sides, elder and younger, 
 should always strive to attain, becomes first doubt- 
 ful, then hopeless, then impossible. 
 
 One secret, original cause of this is the faculty 
 most people have of seeing their rights a great deal 
 clearer than their duties. About these "rights" 
 there are always clouds rising, and one of the prom- 
 inent causes of disunion is often that which ought 
 to be the very bond of union the grandchildren. 
 
 Now, if a woman has a right on earth, it certainly 
 is to the management of her own children. She 
 would not be half a woman if in that matter she 
 submitted to any body's advice or opinion contrary 
 
224 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 to her own ; or if in all things concerning that un- 
 doubted possession, "my baby," she were not as 
 fierce as a tigress, and as hard as a rock. One could 
 forgive her any rebellion, any indignation at un- 
 warrantable interference from her mother-in-law, or 
 even her own mother. And with justice; for if 
 she have any common sense at all, she will prob- 
 ably have in many things as clear practical j udg- 
 ment as grandmamma, whose wisdom belongs to a 
 past generation, and whose memory may not be 
 quite accurate as to the days when she was young. 
 Yet the daughter-in-law who has any right feeling 
 will always listen patiently, and be grateful and 
 yielding to the utmost of her power. Nay, there 
 will spring up a new sympathy between her and 
 the old lady, to whom every new baby-face may 
 bring back a whole tide of long-slumbering recol- 
 lections children grown up and gone away, chil- 
 dren undutiful or estranged or, lastly, little chil- 
 dren's graves. The most irritable and trying of 
 mothers-in-law is a sight venerable and touching, 
 as she sits with "the baby' 7 across her knees, gos- 
 siping about "our children" of forty years ago. 
 
 But, speaking of rights, the wife has limits even 
 to hers. Surely the " primal elder curse" must rest 
 upon the woman who voluntarily or thoughtlessly 
 tries to sow division between her husband and his 
 own flesh and blood above all, between him and 
 his mother. And, putting aside the sin of it, what 
 
ABOUT MOTHERS-IN-LAW. 225 
 
 a poor, jealous coward must she be how weak in 
 her own love, how distrustful of his, who fears lest 
 any influence under heaven least of all those holy, 
 natural ties which are formed by heaven should 
 come between herself and the man who has chosen 
 her for his wife his very other self; her whom, if 
 he be at all a good man, he never will think of com- 
 paring or making a rival with any other, because 
 she is not another she is himself. 
 
 On the other hand, a man who, however low in 
 station or personally distasteful to him may be his 
 wife's relations, tries to wean her from them, exact- 
 ing for himself her sole and particular devotion, to 
 the breaking of the secondary bonds, of which the 
 higher bond ought to make both husband and wife 
 only more tenacious and more tender such a one 
 is grieviously to blame. People may laugh at and 
 sympathize with the unfortunate victim of " Moth- 
 er-in-law Spike," but he is certainly a more respect- 
 able personage than the " gentleman" who, driving 
 in his carriage with his wife and son, passes an old 
 woman the boy's very own grandmother, crawl- 
 ing wearily along the hot, dusty road passes her 
 without recognition. Or the " lady 1 ' who, having 
 done as is not rare in this commercial country, mar- 
 ried a man who has " made himself," henceforward 
 treats the humble mother that bore him, or the fa- 
 ther whose poor name he has ennobled, with digni- 
 fied disdain, instead of feeling that every thing and 
 K2 
 
226 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 every body belonging to him ought to be honored, 
 if only because they belong to him. 
 
 It is a curious fact, subversive of the theories of 
 novelists, that mothers-in-law of sons generally "get 
 on" with them far better than with their daughters- 
 in-law. While it is no unfrequent thing to see in- 
 stances of a man's being kindly, even affectionately 
 attached to his wife's mother, and she to him, al- 
 most any of us could count on our fingers the cases 
 we know where a daughter-in-law is really a daugh- 
 ter to her parents by marriage. Some cause for 
 this is the difference of sex, no man and woman in 
 any relation of life, except the conjugal one, being 
 ever thrown together so wholly and so intimately 
 as to discover one another's weak points in the man- 
 ner women do. Consequently, one rarely hears of 
 a lady being at daggers-drawing with her father-in- 
 law. She is usually on the civilest, friendliest terms 
 with him, and he often takes in her a pride and 
 pleasure truly paternal. For truly, women who are 
 charming to men are common enough ; a far safer 
 test of true beauty of character is it that a woman 
 should be admired and loved by women. It would 
 save half the family squabbles of a generation if 
 the young wives would bestow a modicum of the 
 pains they once took to please their lovers in trying 
 to be attractive to their mothers-iri-law. 
 
 But the husband himself has often much to an- 
 swer for. When, with the blindness and selfish 
 
ABOUT MOTHERS-IN-LAW. 227 
 
 pride of possession natural to a man and a man in 
 love he brings his new idol into his old home, and 
 expects all the family to fall down and worship her, 
 why, they naturally object to so doing. They can 
 not be expected to see her with his eyes. They 
 may think her a very nice girl, a very likeable girl, 
 and, if left alone, would probably become extremely 
 fond of her in time, in a rational way ; but every 
 instinctive obstinacy of human nature revolts from 
 compelled adoration. Heaven forbid that a man 
 should not love, honor, and cherish his own wife, 
 and take her part against all assaulters, if needful, 
 be they of his own flesh and blood ; but one of the 
 greatest injuries a man can possibly do his wife is 
 to be always exacting for her more love than she 
 has had time to win always showing her forth as 
 a picture of perfection, while common eyes see her 
 only as an ordinary woman, blessed with the vir- 
 tues and faults which women can so quickly detect 
 in one another. The kindest, wisest, most dignified 
 course for any young husband on bringing his wife 
 home is to leave her there, trusting her to make her 
 own way, and take her own rightful position by 
 her own honorable deserts. 
 
 A man has ordinarily little time or inclination to 
 quarrel with his mother-in-law. The thousand little 
 irritations constantly occurring between women who 
 do not suit one another, yet are trying hard to keep 
 on good terms for appearance 7 or duty's sake, are 
 
228 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 ridiculous trifles which he can not understand at all. 
 Better he should not. Better the wife should keep 
 her little troubles to herself, and be thankful that 
 on his side he is well disposed to be tolerant toward 
 her mother. Grandmamma, on her part, not unfre- 
 quently likes her son-in-law extremely, asks his ad- 
 vice, is proud of his success in life ; and though 
 thinking, of course, that he is not quite good enough 
 for her darling child as indeed the Angel Gabriel 
 and the Admirable Crichton rolled into one scarcely 
 would have been still she has a very considerable 
 amount of respect for him, and of kindly feeling 
 toward him. If she has not, and shows her want 
 of it, she is the unkindest, most dangerous mother 
 that any married daughter can be afflicted with. 
 If by word or insinuation she tries to divide those 
 whom God has joined together, if she is so mad as 
 to believe she shall benefit her daughter by degrad- 
 ing her daughter's husband, truly this mother-in- 
 law, cherishing a dislike upon unjust grounds, de- 
 serves all retribution that may nay, assuredly will 
 reach her. Even for just cause, such an antipathy 
 is a fatal thing. 
 
 And here we come to one of the most painful 
 phases of this subject, one of the sharpest agonies 
 that woman's nature can endure that is, when a 
 mother-in-law has to see her child, son or daughter, 
 unworthily mated, forced to wear out life, to die a 
 slow daily death, in the despair of that greatest 
 curse upon earth, an ill-assorted marriage. 
 
ABOUT MOTHERS-IN-LAW. 229 
 
 One can conceive, in such a case, the maternal 
 heart being stung into direst hatred against the 
 cause of such misery nay, bursting at times into 
 the rage of a wild beast compelled to witness the 
 torture of its young. This mother-passion, as help- 
 less as hopeless, must be, of its kind, distinct from 
 any other human wretchedness ; and under its goad- 
 ing almost any outbreak of indignation or abhor- 
 rence would be comprehensible nay, pardonable. 
 To have to sit still, and see a heartless woman tor- 
 menting the life out of one's own beloved son, for 
 whom nothing was too noble and precious, or a bru- 
 tal husband breaking the heart of a tender daugh- 
 ter, to whom, ere her marriage, no living creature 
 ever said a harsh or unkind word, this must be ter- 
 rible indeed to bear. And yet it has to be borne 
 again and again. God comfort these unhappy 
 mothers-in-law! Their sufferings are sharp enough 
 to make amends for the wickedness of a hundred 
 Mrs. Mackenzies. 
 
 Yet, until the last limit, the only safe course for 
 them is to endure, and help their children to endure. 
 Cases do arise, and a wise Legislature has lately pro- 
 vided for them, when righteousness itself demands 
 the dissolution of an unrighteous marriage; when 
 a man is justified before heaven and earth in put- 
 ting away his wife ; and the counsel, " Let not the 
 wife depart from her husband," is rendered nuga- 
 tory by circumstances which entail sacrifices greater 
 
230 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 than any woman has a right to make, even to her 
 husband. Every one must have known such in- 
 stances, where the law of divorce becomes as sacred 
 and necessary as that of marriage. But such mel- 
 ancholy unions are, thank God, the exception, not 
 the rule, in this our land, and form no justification 
 for the machinations of bad mothers-in-law. There- 
 fore let them, in all minor troubles, practice pa- 
 tience, courage, hope. If, according to the apostle 
 (who, though himself unmarried, wrote on this sub- 
 ject with that wide, calm observation which some- 
 times seizes on a truth more clearly than does one- 
 sided experience), the unbelieving husband may be 
 converted by the believing wife, and vice versa, who 
 knows but that a harsh husband, a neglectful wife, 
 may sometimes be won over to better things by the 
 quiet dignity, the forbearance, the unceasing loving- 
 kindness of a good, generous mother-in-law? 
 
 Let us take her in one last phase in her long life 
 it must have been a sufficiently long one and 
 these few words concerning her are ended. 
 
 There arrives a season when the sharpest, most 
 intolerable mother-in-law becomes harmless ; when 
 a chair by the fireside, or a bedridden station in 
 some far-away room constitutes the sole dominion 
 from which she can exercise even the show of rule 
 or interference. Thence, the only change probable 
 or desirable will be to a narrower pillow, where the 
 gray head is laid down in peace, and all the acerbi- 
 
ABOUT MOTHERS-IN-LAW. 231 
 
 ties, infirmities, or fatuities of old age are buried 
 tenderly out of sight, under the green turf that cov- 
 ers " dear grandmamma." 
 
 Then, and afterward, blessed are those sons and 
 daughters, by blood or marriage, who, during her 
 lifetime, so acted toward her that her death lays 
 upon them no burden of bitter remembrance ; and 
 blessed is she who, living, lived so that her memory 
 is hallowed by all her children alike, and who is 
 remembered by them only as "mother" never, 
 even in name, as " mother-in-law." 
 
232 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 ur Co0t (Hat 
 
 THE besoin d" 1 aimer is perhaps one of the least 
 mean of human weaknesses. Many are the troubles 
 it causes to all of us, and yet we would fain not 
 quite get rid of it, and are, on the whole, rather 
 more respectable people with it than without it. 
 Even for the unfortunate man to whom even his 
 wife is only 
 
 "A little better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse," 
 
 or the forlorn old maid who, dying without heirs, 
 endows her twelve parrots with enough to make 
 the fortune of more than one poor family, it is at 
 least a degree better to be fond of something, be it 
 only a brute beast, than nothing. And many a 
 brute beast is capable of being raised, by education, 
 attention, and kindness, to an affectionate rationali- 
 ty, which makes it quite as pleasant company as, 
 alas ! a great many human beings. 
 
 This is not meant to be an essay in defense of 
 pets, often most intolerable nuisances to every body 
 but the possessor pet dogs (perhaps the most un- 
 bearable), pet birds, fowls, rabbits, monkeys, and the 
 long line of domesticated quadrupeds and bipeds, 
 
OUR LOST CAT. 233 
 
 down to the featherless biped, the child-pet, or the 
 charity-pet, whose lot is the most cruel-kind of any. 
 I am only going to tell a very plain and simple 
 story about a lost pet of ours, who cost us the usual 
 amount of pain which all who are guilty of the 
 afore-named weakness of being fond of something 
 must consent to endure. 
 
 We that is, myself and the sharer in my loss 
 are not universally benevolent. We do not take to 
 our bosoms every walking, hopping, and creeping 
 thing. We are eclectic in our tastes, and though 
 we hope we would treat civilly and kindly every 
 creature alive, still we have never had any particu- 
 lar interest in more than one sort of pets, and that 
 is cats. 
 
 I hope the gentle reader will not here immedi- 
 ately lay down this book in a mood of calm con- 
 tempt ; or, if he has done so, may I respectfully re- 
 quest him to take it up again ? I assure him that 
 he shall meet with nothing insanely extravagant or 
 sentimentally maudlin ; that his prej udices will be 
 treated with deference, and himself regarded as a 
 person who is simply mistaken nothing more. 
 He never could have had a pet cat. 
 
 We have had many ; the fact that a cat's nine 
 lives do not equal one human being's necessitating 
 that plural, otherwise we would have kept faithful 
 to this day unto our first favorite, u Muff," fallen in 
 with at the age of three, or his successor, our veri- 
 
234 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 table first love, Eose Bose, the flower of cats, who 
 bloomed in our household for ten years. My heart 
 softens as I recall her. Her memory is green still ; 
 and I may yet, for a newer generation, write a Biog- 
 raphy of our Rose. 
 
 Since her day we have both had several pets 
 en passant confiding cats who followed us home 
 through London streets, as they always have a trick 
 of doing ; antipodean cats, who, changing their na- 
 tures, would go shooting with their master in the 
 forests, "point" the game, and bring it to him with 
 an unfailing faithfulness ; sea-borne cats, cherished 
 during half a voyage, and then missed after which 
 rumored to have been seen floating away, helplessly 
 mewing, for a quarter of a mile astern. Yet we 
 have had but one pet who at all supplied the place 
 of the never -forgotten Eose. Of him I am now 
 about to tell. 
 
 He was the first-born of his mother, but in no 
 wise like her, she being the ugliest, stupidest, and 
 most untender of feline animals. Her very kit- 
 tens she would carry into damp corners and under 
 grates, and there forsake them, to be trodden to 
 death or shoveled unwittingly on to the back of 
 the fire; nay, with some she is reported to have 
 done as the New Zealand husband did with the 
 wife whom he couldn't keep and was too fond of 
 to part with she is reported to have eaten them. 
 Peace to her manes ! Nothing in her life ever be- 
 came her like the leaving of it. 
 
OUR LOST CAT. 235 
 
 But her son was quite a different character. His 
 beauty was his least merit. In kittenhood he had 
 such winning ways that he was continually asked 
 to tea in the parlor; cradled in apron pockets, 
 gowns, and shirt-fronts ; taught to walk on the ta- 
 ble, and educated with a care and distinction which 
 could not but make him the most gentlemanly of 
 cats. And such he grew. There was a conscious 
 " fine-young-fellow"ism in the very arch of his back 
 and curve of his handsome tail. His tail, we al- 
 ways said, was his weak point a pardonable van- 
 ity. He seemed to take a conscious pride in it, as a 
 fashionable Antinous might in his curls, his hands, 
 or his whiskers. For his morals, they were as unex- 
 ceptionable as his appearance. He was rarely heard 
 to mew, even for his dinner ; and as for theft, I re- 
 member the sublime indignation of his first friend 
 and protector, the cook, when one day I suggested 
 shutting the pantry-door: "He steal! He never 
 would think of such a thing!" 
 
 Have I sufficiently indicated his mental and moral 
 perfections? Add to these a social and affectionate 
 disposition, remarkable even in parlor-educated cats, 
 and a general suavity of manner which made him 
 considerate to the dog, and patronizingly indifferent 
 to the fowls, and what more need be said of him 
 except his name ? This can not be revealed ; such 
 publicity might wound his delicate sensitiveness. 
 In this article he must only be known as "Lo." 
 
236 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 No bad name either: there was once a Saint Lo, of 
 knightly memory: so "Lo" is well suited to desig- 
 nate the most chivalrous of cats. 
 
 He grew up to maturity in the house where he 
 was born. For three years his familiar apple-tree, 
 on which he tried his youthful claws, blossomed 
 and bore ; for three years the sparrows in the thorn 
 and willow provided him with a little useful recre- 
 ation no worse, certainly, than deer-stalking and 
 hare-hunting ; and then his destiny darkened. We 
 were about to flit a long flitting of some hundred 
 miles and more ; and of all the questions involved 
 therein, one of the most difficult was, What was to 
 be done with Lo ? We could not leave him ; we 
 did not like to give him away ; and yet we feared 
 that the cry, "A new home who'll follow?" would 
 never be responded to by him. The most frequent 
 suggestion was to take his photograph, and then 
 give him a little dose of the "fixing" material, 
 which would " fix" both him and his likeness for- 
 ever in this world, and save all farther trouble. 
 But this idea was not likely to be carried out. 
 
 "Where there's a will there's a way." I made 
 up my mind concerning him. 
 
 On the day of the flitting when he was lying 
 peacefully and unconsciously on his native kitchen 
 hearth, which he was never more to behold I car- 
 ried him, purring and fondling me, to an empty 
 room up stairs, and locked him in, together with a 
 
OUR LOST CAT, 237 
 
 hamper and dinner. He did not quite understand 
 the proceeding, but accommodated himself to cir- 
 cumstances, and lay down to sleep in the sunshine. 
 There, ignorant of the black future, he passed his 
 day. At nightfall I packed him and sewed him up, 
 still purring, in the hamper of his woes. From 
 that hour there was no more peace for our unfor- 
 tunate Lo. 
 
 He, with myself, was taken in for a week by a 
 benevolent family who kept a bird. This necessi- 
 tated Lo's solitary confinement in a wash-house. 
 Thither, almost exanimate from fright I believe 
 he even fainted in my arms was he conveyed; 
 and there, though visited, fed, and condoled with, 
 he remained in a state of 'mind and body of inde- 
 scribable wretchedness, sleeping in the copper, and 
 at the least noise retiring for refuge up the chimney. 
 His appearance, when being repacked for his sec- 
 ond journey, was that of a disconsolate, half-idiotic 
 sweep. 
 
 Through all the roar of London, on the top of 
 cab or omnibus, was borne the luckless cat. What 
 could he have thought of the great Babel he who, 
 among suburban gardens and fields, had passed his 
 peaceful days ? He never uttered a sound ; not 
 even when, finding no boy at hand, I took up his 
 hamper myself, and carried it the length of a square, 
 conversing with him meantime, till the sight of a 
 passer-by turning round reminded me that this 
 
238 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 might possibly convey to the public in general the 
 impression of my being slightly insane. One pause 
 he had in his miseries one happy evening by a 
 charitable kitchen hearth, and then he was, hamper 
 and all, consigned to the parcel- van of the northern 
 mail. 
 
 "Please take care of it it's a cat." 
 
 " A what, ma'am?" asked the magnificent-look< 
 ing guard. 
 
 " A cat a live cat." 
 
 He laughed. " Oh yes, ma'am all right." And 
 so I bade poor Lo a temporary farewell. 
 
 Letters communicated his well-being. He had 
 arrived at home had recovered from his first 
 paroxysms of terror had even begun to wash 
 himself and appear like a cat of civilized mien. 
 There was hope that I should find him sitting hap- 
 pily on the hearth, which, we are weak enough to 
 fancy, never looks quite comfortable and home-like 
 without a cat. But hope deceived. My first ques- 
 tion on my return, "How is he?" was answered 
 dolefully, "He has run away." 
 
 Ay, just when his troubles were ended, when hie 
 mistress was coming home, when all the delights of 
 milk and cream, sunshiny lawns to sleep on, green 
 trees to climb, mice, and dare I say it? young' 
 birds to eat, were opening before him, he ran away ! 
 I returned to a catless fireside. 
 
 Of course, every search was made ; a reward of- 
 
OUR LOST CAT. 239 
 
 fered; the village policeman applied to; but day 
 after day passed, and no sight of Lo. Sometimes 
 flying rumors reached us of his being seen in gar- 
 dens, or scampering across fields, or sheltering in 
 some stable or barn. Once the policeman paid us 
 a special visit, stating formally his knowledge of 
 his whereabouts, and that every measure should be 
 taken for his recovery ; but even the professional 
 skill, worthy of being exercised on some distin- 
 guished criminal, failed with regard to our cat. 
 We had almost given him up for lost. 
 
 Now one ought never patiently to submit to any 
 loss till all possible means have been tried, and fail- 
 ing, have proved it to be irremediable. One even- 
 ing, after he had been a week missing, and taking 
 into account his exceedingly shy and timid disposi- 
 tion, the strange country in which he had lost him- 
 self, and his utter ignorance of ill usage, we began 
 to relinquish all hope of his return, I resolved to go 
 in search of the cat myself a scheme about as wild 
 as starting to hunt up a brother in Australia, or a 
 friend in the Far West a sort of " Evangeline" ex- 
 pedition. Yet most women, reading Longfellow's 
 exquisite poem, must feel that such a proceeding as 
 Evangeline's would be perfectly natural, reasonable, 
 and probable, under similar circumstances. Who 
 among us would not do the same for any one be- 
 loved ? Why not then, in a small way, for an un 
 fortunate cat ? 
 
240 STUDIES FEOM LIFE. 
 
 So, after tea, I went out. It was a lovely even- 
 ing, with hedges just budding, and thrushes just 
 beginning to pipe out that peculiar rich note which 
 always reminds one of the return of spring an 
 evening when one enjoys, and likes to think of all 
 those belonging to one as enjoying, the renewal of 
 nature, life, and hope. I did not like to think of 
 even my cat my poor cat, for whom was no after- 
 life, no immortal and eternal spring dying in a 
 ditch, or starved, beaten, ill used, till death was the 
 kindest hope I could have for him. I almost wish- 
 ed I had taken his friend's advice, that we had pho- 
 tographed him, and " fixed" him, safe from all mor- 
 tal care. 
 
 At the nearest house, where he had once been 
 seen, and where I had inquired the day before, both 
 the civil husband and pleasant-looking wife knew 
 quite well "the lady who had lost her cat:" they 
 sympathized ; and I felt sure that if he appeared 
 again he would be coaxed, caught, and brought safe 
 home. I then continued rny pilgrimage. 
 
 Door after door did I attack with the stereotyped 
 inquiry, " Have you seen a strange cat? I have 
 lost my pet cat, which I brought all the way from 
 London. He is a great beauty, gray, with a partic- 
 ularly fine tail. I will give five shillings to any 
 body who brings him back ; my name and address 
 are so and so." 
 
 This brief and simple formula was repeated, witli 
 
OUR LOST CAT. 241 
 
 slight ad libitum variations, from house to house 
 within a mile. Once I ventured to address a milk- 
 woman : with no result ; she was a stranger ; and 
 once a little boy playing about the road, whom I 
 afterward heard commenting to a friend in this 
 wise: "I say, Jack, that lady's hunting after a 
 strange cat. He, he, he ! I wouldn't hunt after a 
 strange cat would you?" 
 
 Equally unsympathetic was an elderly gentle- 
 man, the owner of a beautiful house, garden, and 
 conservatory, and who came most politely to the 
 door, his bonnie little granddaughter holding by 
 his hand. He had a fine face, long silvery hair, 
 was bland and amiable of demeanor, reminding me 
 of Mr. Dickens's " Casby the Patriarch." 
 
 u Madam," said he, after hearing my tale, "if 
 feline animals are allowed to inhabit such a place, 
 I devoutly wish all the cats in this world were in 
 Paradise ! They are the ruin of us horticulturists. 
 Do not regret your cat. I can supply you out of 
 my garden with any number, dead or alive." 
 
 I explained that mine was an individual pet. 
 
 " Then, madam, could you not place your affec- 
 tions upon pets more worthy?" and he stroked the 
 little girl's pretty flaxen hair. " I am sorry to wound 
 your feelings ; but there have been and I should 
 rather regret their leaving some Birmingham peo- 
 ple in this neighborhood who make a trade of catch- 
 ing and skinning cats." 
 L 
 
242 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 I turned away horrified, yet could hardly forbear 
 a smile ; the eccentric, but, I firmly believe, well- 
 meaning old gentleman received my adieus, and 
 bowed me to the very gate. 
 
 Many another house I tried, my search having 
 one result, namely, the discovery that I had a num- 
 ber of nice neighbors old ladies, neat as a new 
 pin ; spruce parlor-maids ; kindly mistresses, mostly 
 with babies such an abundance of civil tongues, 
 and pleasant, good-natured, nay, handsome faces, as 
 might well be satisfactory to a new-comer into this 
 country place. I also gained one consolation, that 
 it was the safest neighborhood in which Lo could 
 possibly have been lost, since all the good folk 
 seemed personally acquainted, not only with one 
 another, but with one another's cats. Ours might 
 yet turn up, or, if not, might find an asylum in the 
 bosom of some unknown family, who would console 
 him for the cruel mistress and uncomprehended mis- 
 eries which doubtless had unsettled his reason, and 
 driven him to despairing flight. 
 
 So, having done all that could be done, I was 
 fain to turn homeward 
 
 "In the spring twilight, in the colored twilight," 
 
 never seen except in spring. It tinted the bare 
 trees and brown hedges, throwing over the whole 
 sky a tender light, and changing the shiny bit of 
 far-away western sea into a lake of glowing roses. 
 Wonderful was the peace over all animate and in- 
 
OUR LOST CAT. 243 
 
 animate nature, as it lay, waiting in faith the step- 
 by-step advance of another unknown year. 
 
 Passing the lodge of the big house of the village 
 an open door, firelight, and children's prattle, in- 
 spired me with one last vague hope. I knocked. 
 
 " Have you seen/' etc., etc., etc., as usual. 
 
 No. Yet the sight disclosed almost atoned for 
 the disappointment. An interior such as only an 
 English cottage could furnish; a cottager's wife 
 such as Morland or Gainsborough would have de- 
 lighted to immortalize. Her face, healthy, fair, and 
 sweet nay, downright beautiful, was reflected feat- 
 ure by feature in two other little faces one staring 
 out bravely from beside mother, the other half-hid- 
 den in her gown. The latter charming little face, 
 which no persuasions could allure from its shelter, 
 was itself worth the whole evening's pilgrimage to 
 look at ; and the centre picture, half twilight, half 
 firelight, is a thing to be set down in memory among 
 passing glimpses of unutterably beautiful fragments, 
 which remain daguerreotyped as such forever. 
 
 This episode, with the rest, amused us for some 
 time, when, coming home, we talked over our 
 chances of recovering our lost pet, conjecturing 
 that for a month to come we should have all the 
 stray cats of the neighborhood brought to us for 
 recognition except the right one. But to u greet 
 ower spilt milk" is not our custom. So, having 
 done our best, we dismissed the subject. 
 
244 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 Next day, sitting at work, I heard a scuffle in the 
 hall; the door was flung joyfully open: 
 
 " Ma'am, there's your cat." 
 
 It was indeed Lo. Gaunt, scared, dirty ; fierce 
 with hunger, and half wild with fright, the poor 
 runaway was brought home to his mistress's arms. 
 
 After the immemorial fashion, I drop a veil over 
 the pathetic scene which followed. 
 
 & x * * # * x 
 
 He now lies fast asleep at my feet. He has 
 made a clean breast of it that is to say, he has 
 resumed his usual costume of white shirt-front and 
 white stockings, which contributes so largely to 
 his gentlemanly appearance. He has also gradual- 
 ly lost his scared look, and is coming into his right 
 mind. A few minutes since he was walking over 
 my desk, arching his poor thin back in the ancient 
 fashion, and sweeping my face with his sadly di- 
 minished but still inimitable tail ; putting his paws 
 on my shoulders, and making frantic efforts at an 
 affectionate salutation had I not a trifling objec- 
 tion to that ceremony. 
 
 Surely, after all this bitter experience, he will 
 recognize his truest friends true even in their un* 
 kindness ; will believe in his new quarters as home, 
 and play the prodigal no more. 
 
 Poor Lo ! I hope it is not applying profanely 
 " the noblest sentiments of the human heart" if, 
 as he lies there, snugly and safely, I involuntarily 
 
OUR LOST CAT. 245 
 
 hum to myself a verse out of The ClerUs Two, Sons 
 of Owsenford: 
 
 "The hallow days o' Yule were come, 
 
 And the nichts were lang and mirk, 
 When in there cam her ain twa sons, 
 Wi' their hats made o' the birk. 
 
 "Blaw up the fire now, maidens mine, 
 
 Bring water frae the well : 
 For a' my house sail feast this nicht, 
 Since my twa sons are well. 
 
 "And she has gane and made their bed, 
 
 She's made it saft and fine, 
 And she's happit them in her gay mantil, 
 Because they were her ain." 
 
 (Bless us, what would " Mr. Casby" say ?) 
 
 I here end rny story. For, since fortune is fickle, 
 and affection often vain, better end it now; lest, as 
 Madame Cottin says in the final sentence of her 
 Exiles of Siberia, " Did I continue this history, I 
 might have to chronicle a new misfortune." 
 
246 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 Uabe0 tn tlje tUoob 
 
 WHICH was the title jocularly given in our house- 
 hold to an interesting young family, reared this 
 summer in a hole in the trunk of a venerable ap- 
 ple-tree at the corner of the garden. Children, 
 shall I tell you their history, " beginning at the 
 very beginning," which you know you like? 
 
 It was toward the end of May, and our garden 
 was becoming a perfect aviary. It is a very old- 
 fashioned garden, stocked with ancient fruit-trees : 
 
 "Apple and pear, and plum and cherry, 
 Or any thing else to make us merry," 
 
 as many a bird sang, or meant to sing in bird lan- 
 guage, with luxuriant undergrowth of currants, 
 gooseberries, raspberries, running almost wild. In 
 this paradise are admitted neither guns, nor traps, 
 nor bird-nesting boys ; so we presume it is a region 
 well-known to all our feathered neighbors, and that 
 they mention it to one another privately under 
 the rose, or the hawthorn-bush as "a most desir- 
 able place for house-building." 
 
 We had concerts gratis all day over, mingled 
 with chirpings and squabblings among the spar- 
 rows, the most quarrelsome birds alive ; and a few 
 
MY BABES IN THE WOOD. 247 
 
 inexplicable "rows" of a general kind, after which 
 a cuckoo would be seen flying, in her lazy, heavy 
 way, from the scene of dispute, pursued by a great 
 clamor of lesser birds. Mrs. C., however, seemed 
 indifferent to public opinion; would settle herself 
 on a tree in the field, and indulge us with her soft, 
 plaintive "Cuck-oo! Cuck-oo!" till she was tired. 
 
 Nest-building was at its height namely, the tree- 
 tops. The most important mansion was owned by 
 a pair of anonymous birds I believe of the thrush 
 species, though they did not sing. They had gone 
 about their domestic affairs so silently that the fam- 
 ily were nearly fledged before the nest was discov- 
 ered. Afterward, for days, they gave me no little 
 disquietude. I used to be disturbed at inconvenient 
 seasons from work or talk by the misery of these 
 big ungainly birds they were nearly as large as 
 pigeons which kept flying franticly about the gar- 
 den, and screeching discordantly, all because a curi- 
 ous but perfectly well-intentioned lad was peering 
 into their nest. If my pet cat happened to lie in 
 sleepiest innocence on the parlor window-sill, these 
 indignant parents would swoop fiercely past him 
 close enough to have pecked his eyes out, and sit 
 screeching at him from the neighboring tree. He 
 never took any notice ; but* since feline nature is 
 weak, especially on the subject of birds, from the 
 day that the nest was vacated, and more than one 
 newly-fledged youngster was seen hopping awk< 
 
248 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 wardly about under the gooseberry -bushes, I was 
 kept in mortal fear lest my cat should walk in at 
 the window with a young thrush in his mouth. 
 No such disaster happened ; yet I confess that when 
 the thrush family finally disappeared it was a great 
 relief to my mind. 
 
 My next friends were a pair of torn-tits, which 
 took possession of a crack in the wall underneath 
 my bedroom window. Their privacy was extreme. 
 It was a mystery how they contrived to creep in 
 and out of a hole apparently not big enough to ad- 
 mit a large blue-bottle fly ; and their little family 
 must have been reared in very cramped lodgings. 
 Nobody ever saw the young ones, for it would be 
 impossible to get at them. Yet it was pleasant of 
 a morning to watch the old birds flying to and fro, 
 hanging a moment outside of the crack, and then 
 popping in. They were very pretty birds, the 
 papa especially a most natty little fellow, delicate- 
 ly shaped, with a glossy blue-black head. After 
 feeding-time was over, he used to go and sit on the 
 nearest tree, in sight of his domestic establishment, 
 brushing up his feathers, and singing " tit, tit, tit," 
 the utmost he could do. When at last this worthy 
 little couple vanished children and all I rather 
 missed them from the crack in the wall. 
 
 But of all my garden families, the one most cared 
 for was that which I have to : day lost rny babes in 
 the wood. Let me resume their history. 
 
MY BABES IN THE WOOD. 249 
 
 It was about the end of May, when, in my daily 
 walk before breakfast which you will find is the 
 very best hour for observing birds or any thing 
 else in nature I found that, whenever I passed a 
 particular corner, I always startled some large bird, 
 which flew away in alarm. At last I saw it, beak, 
 head, and all, emerging from a hole in a half-decayed 
 apple-tree. It was a blackbird. 
 
 " So, my friend," said I, " you are evidently bent 
 on settling a very laudable proceeding and you 
 shall not be disturbed." 
 
 Therefore, though I passed the tree twenty times 
 a day, and each time out flew a bird, for many days 
 I generously abstained from taking any notice of 
 the busy little house-builders. At last, after watch- 
 ing one of them scramble out of the hole the hen- 
 bird probably, as she was large, clumsy, and brown- 
 ish (it really is hard that the female of most birds 
 should generally be so much less good-looking than 
 the male), I ventured to look in. There, with some 
 difficulty, I saw, a foot or more deep in the hollow 
 tree, four bluish eggs. 
 
 Considering them now fairly settled in house- 
 keeping, I took every opportunity that their shy- 
 ness allowed of becoming acquainted with the new- 
 comers. Soon I knew them well by sight, and 
 they certainly had a fair chance of reciprocating 
 the compliment. Gradually they showed less fear ; 
 and though that peculiar cry, half twitter, half 
 L2 
 
250 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 screech, which seemed used as a signal of alarm 
 between the parents, was still uttered, it was not in 
 that shrill, pitiful anguish which makes one feel 
 that 
 
 "To rob a poor bird of its young," < 
 
 or even to make it apprehensive on the point, al- 
 most transforms one, in one's own conscience, to an 
 ogre killing a baby. 
 
 The old birds were a goodly pair. Mr. B., as I 
 named him, was an uncommonly handsome little 
 gentleman jet black, with the slenderest figure, 
 the yellowest bill, the brightest eyes ; quite a beau 
 among blackbirds. But, with all his beauty, he 
 was the most attentive of husbands, and the most 
 cheerful and musical. He had great richness and 
 variety of song, made distinct turns and trills nay, 
 I once heard him execute a distinct shake on two 
 notes. He never tired of singing. Lying awake 
 one night, I heard him begin with the dawn, loud 
 as ever ; and in showery weather his exuberant 
 carols lasted all day long. 
 
 But the treat of treats was to watch him perched 
 on the topmost spray of a poplar, not yet fully in 
 leaf^ so that his delicate shape was clearly discern- 
 ible against the sky, and listen to him in the still 
 June evening singing to his wife and family a song 
 that almost brought the tears into one's eyes to 
 think there should be such a happy creature in the 
 world. 
 
MY BABES IN THE WOOD. 251 
 
 Meantime the world jogged on as it will,, and all 
 sorts of things were week after week happening to 
 every body in it, while peaceful in his garden, 
 which no doubt he looked upon as his own person- 
 al property, currants, raspberry -bushes, and all, 
 
 "That blithe and indefatigable bird, 
 Still his redundant song of love and joy preferred." 
 
 Mrs. B. I rarely saw, not even when looking down 
 into the nest, though she was probably there all 
 the while, brooding dusky and motionless over the 
 four eggs. You may have noticed that nothing 
 alive is so absolutely motionless as a hen-bird sit- 
 ting on her nest. You may go up to her, almost 
 put your hand upon her, and not a feather will 
 stir; hardly a twinkle of the bright observant eye 
 will betray her consciousness of your presence, or 
 the maternal agony which at the last minute, and 
 not till then, drives her away by the mere instinct 
 of self-preservation from her rifled home. I won- 
 der how any boy who ever had a home and a 
 mother can take a bird's nest, 
 
 I thought the eggs a long time hatching; but 
 that was Mrs. B.'s affair, not mine. One fine morn- 
 ing, passing the apple-tree, I heard a chirp, weak 
 and faint, but still the chirp of a living thing, and 
 felt as pleased as well, as most people are when 
 silly, young, helpless things of any sort are newly 
 introduced into the business of this world. But 
 the parents flew about so wildly, and appeared in 
 
252 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 such a frantic state of mind, that I had not the 
 heart to frighten them farther by looking into the 
 nest. Next day, in their absence, I did so ; and 
 lo! four wide-open mouths mouths and nothing 
 else stretched themselves up from the bottom of 
 the hole, in true infantine fashion clamorously de- 
 manding "something to eat." 
 
 " My young friends," thought I, " your papa and 
 mamma are likely to have a busy life of it, if this 
 is your behavior on the second day of your exist- 
 ence." 
 
 But the third, fourth, and all following days it 
 was just the same. I never saw any young crea- 
 tures, including kittens and babies, so incessantly 
 and preternaturally hungry. As soon as my step 
 was heard passing arose from the heart of the ap- 
 ple-tree that eager "chirp, chirp, chirp," and there 
 were those four gaping beaks, or sometimes three, 
 one having apparently had its worm and retired 
 content, ravenously appealing to me for their brec^k- 
 fast. Very flattering to be mistaken for an old 
 blackbird ! 
 
 In process of time, my "young family," as they 
 began to be called, grew wiser and less clamorous ; 
 but still, they always chirped when I looked in at 
 the nest, and their parents, seeing no ill result, be- 
 came more at ease even familiar. Many a morn- 
 ing, as I sat reading under a tree about three yards 
 off, Mrs. B. would come and sit on the bough with- 
 
MY BABES IN THE WOOD. 253 
 
 in a few inches of her nursery, and hold a soft, 
 chirping conversation with her little ones, while 
 her husband was practicing his florid music on the 
 topmost branch of the tree. They were a very 
 happy family, I do think, and a pattern to many 
 unfeathered families far and near. 
 
 One night in June we had a terrific storm. The 
 thunder, close overhead, rolled through the heavy 
 dawn like parks of artillery ; the rain came drip- 
 ping through the roof and soaking in at the win- 
 dow-sills. We afterward heard, with no great sur- 
 prise, of churches struck, wheat-stacks burned up, 
 and trees in the next garden blasted by the light- 
 ning; but, amid all these disasters, I grieve to con- 
 fess, one of my most prominent thoughts was, 
 What will become of my young blackbirds? for 
 their hole being open to the sky, I expected the 
 torrents of rain would have filled it like a tub, and 
 drowned them, poor wee things ! in their nest. 
 
 How this did not happen I even now am puzzled 
 to decide ; whether the rain soaked safely through 
 the wood, or the parents, turning their wings into 
 umbrellas, sat patiently over the opening of the 
 hole till the storm was passed. But next morning, 
 when I paddled through the dripping garden to see 
 if they were alive, there they were, all four, as 
 perky and hungry as ever ! And at noon, a stray 
 sunbeam, piercing into their shadowy nursery, gave 
 me a distinct vision of the whole family, sound 
 
254: STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 asleep, packed tightly together, with their heads 
 over one another's backs, not a feather ruffled 
 they had feathers now among the whole brood. 
 What cared they for thunder-storms ? 
 
 They throve apace. Once, coming suddenly 
 round the corner, I saw on the edge of the hole 
 the drollest little head, all beak and eyes, which 
 looked about for a minute, and then popped clown 
 again. Doubtless the eldest of the family, an ad- 
 venturous and inquisitive young bird, desirous to 
 investigate the world for himself; after w r hich he 
 and the rest were probably well scolded by the old 
 blackbirds, and advised caution ; for sometimes the 
 silence in the nest was such that I thought they 
 had all flown, till I caught sight of the four little 
 yellow bills and eight twinkling eyes. 
 
 Still, one now might daily expect their depart- 
 ure; and I own to an uncomfortable feeling at 
 thought of the empty nest, until an incident hap- 
 pened which reconciled me to the natural course 
 of things. 
 
 One morning, at our railway station, I overheard 
 two of my neighbors conversing. 
 
 "Yes," said one, "they are very great annoy- 
 ances in gardens. I shot this morning a fellow 
 which no doubt had his nest somewhere near a 
 remarkabty fine blackbird." 
 
 "Sir," I was just on the point of saying, "was 
 ifc my blackbird ? have you dared to shoot my 
 
MY BABES IN THE WOOD. 255 
 
 blackbird?" and a thrill of alarm, mixed with a 
 sensation so fierce that I now smile to recall it, 
 passed through me, and remained long after I be- 
 came aware of the ludicrous impossibility of ex- 
 pressing it. If I could have given " a piece of my 
 mind" to that stout middle-aged gentleman, who 
 went on saying what a good shot he was, and how 
 many birds he usually killed in his garden of a 
 morning, he might not have gone into town to his 
 office so composedly. 
 
 The wrong he did, however, was to some other 
 " young family," not mine. I found them chirping 
 away, neither fatherless nor motherless. Mrs. B. 
 was hopping, stout and matronly, among the apple- 
 branches, and Mr. B. caroling his heart out in his 
 favorite cherry-tree, where probably he feasted as 
 contentedly as our friend of the gun would on 
 lamb and green peas in the merchants' dining- 
 rooms. 
 
 My happy family ! That was my last sight of 
 their innocent enjoyment. The same evening, two 
 warning voices insinuated cruelly, "Your black- 
 birds are flown." 
 
 I denied it. Not ten minutes before, I had 
 heard, or fancied I heard, their usual sleepy chirp 
 before they were quiet for the night at the bottom 
 of the hole. 
 
 " Yes, they are gone. We poked " 
 
 "You didn't surely poke them with a stick?' 1 
 
256 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 "No," cried the accused criminals, "but we 
 poked a straw, and then dropped a gooseberry 
 down into their hole. We heard it fall, and not a 
 chirp not a stir. Now not even your blackbirds 
 could have received such an unexpected visitor a 
 large, hard, green gooseberry, without giving some 
 sign of surprise. Depend upon it, they are flown." 
 
 They were not, though. Next morning I both 
 heard and saw them again, snug as ever, or so I 
 believed. But a few hours after, taking advantage 
 of the bright noon sunshine pouring direct on it, I 
 looked deep down into the familiar hole. There 
 was the nest, neat and round, and there, in the mid- 
 dle of it, reigning in desolate grandeur, was the 
 large green gooseberry ! 
 
 " My young family is gone !" said I, rather sadly, 
 when, having peered in every garden-nook, and 
 found no sign of them, I carne in-doors. 
 
 " Oh yes," was the reply ; " they left the nest an 
 hour ago. The boy helped them out. They had 
 got to the top of the hole, and couldn't get farther; 
 so he just put his hand in and gave them a lift, and 
 out they flew." 
 
 "All four of them?" 
 
 " All four and as big as their parents." 
 
 " And they have not been seen about the garden 
 any where?" 
 
 "Nowhere. They just got out of the nest, and 
 away they flew." 
 
MY BABES IN THE WOOD. 257 
 
 So that is the end of my story. 
 
 I hope my "young family" are enjoying them- 
 selves very much somewhere ; that they find plenty 
 of fruit, and worms, and sunshiny weather ; above 
 all, that they take care to keep out of the garden 
 of my warlike neighbor who takes his early morn- 
 ing rambles in company with a gun. But my gar- 
 den, I confess, is a little duller than it used to be, 
 and for some weeks to come I shall probably pre- 
 fer other corners of it to that which contains the 
 empty cradle of my Babes in the Wood. 
 
258 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 Stye Ulan of 
 
 ACCORDING TO OUR GREAT-GRANDMOTHERS. 
 
 CERTAIN classical works resemble ghosts, which 
 every body hears of and nobody sees. How few, 
 even among their professed worshipers, really know 
 enough of the two grand idols of English litera- 
 ture to stand an examination in Milton or Shak- 
 speare, even if verbal quotations were not required, 
 but merely a general acquaintance with the argu- 
 ment of the poems, the characters and plots of the 
 plays. Also, in spite of the grandiloquent non- 
 sense talked about the father of English verse, who 
 but a true poet ever appreciates Chaucer? And 
 did any reader, even a poet, fairly get through 
 Spenser's Faerie Queene? Is it the blame of the 
 public or the publishers that a late much-adver- 
 tised edition of the British classics stopped at its 
 second or third volume? Has the world grown 
 stupider than of yore, or is it only suffering from 
 the reaction of obstinacy, after several centuries' im- 
 position of celebrated authors, whose works " no 
 gentleman's library should ever be without." And 
 seldom is ; for they are usually found safe on the 
 shelves. 
 
THE MAN OF MEN. 259 
 
 How few, for instance, of the novel-readers of the 
 present generation have the slightest knowledge, 
 other than by name, of the hero of our great-grand- 
 mothersthe "man of men," as his author fre- 
 quently entitles him. Who of them could answer 
 affirmatively the simple question, "Did you ever 
 read Sir Charles Grandison?" 
 
 Some may plead sarcastically, "No, but I tried." 
 Cruel condemnation ! Poor Mr. Richardson, may it 
 never reach thee in thy already-forgotten grave; 
 and may it prove a warning to all voluminous writ- 
 ers depending on future as well as present celebri- 
 ty! And you, ye venerable ancestresses, whose 
 tastes were simple, and whose books few who 
 used to adore the portly old bookseller even as the 
 romantic maidens of to-day adore Dickens, Bulwer, 
 Thackeray haunt not in rustling brocades and 
 ghostly heel-taps your degenerate descendants be- 
 cause they own to have tried to read Sir Charles 
 Grandison. 
 
 Yet the undertaking requires courage. First, to 
 drag from dustiest topmost shelves, or meekly re- 
 quest at the oldest of circulating libraries a work 
 not exactly the "last new novel," nor very like- 
 ly to be "out." Then, having carried it home, for 
 which purpose may be recommended a porter's 
 knot or a small carpet-bag, resolutely to open vol. 
 i. with its yellow, grimy, torn and mended pages 
 its brown antique type and eccentric spelling its 
 
260 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 fly-leaves and margins adorned here and there with 
 out-of-date caligraphy comments on the text, or 
 scrawled dates and names, the owner of which may 
 be presumed long since to scrawl no more. Some- 
 thing melancholy is there, even in the queerness of 
 this old-world book, resuscitated for the criticism of 
 a new generation. 
 
 Let us copy the title-page : 
 
 " THE HISTORY OF SIR CHARLES GRANDISON, 
 
 In a Series of Letters. 
 By Mr. SAMUEL EICHARDSON, 
 Author of Pamela and Clarissa. 
 
 In Seven Volumes. 
 The Eighth Edition. 
 
 Printed for T. Longman, J. Johnson, G. G. and J. 
 Eobertson, E. Baldwin, J. Nicholls, S. Bladon, W. 
 Eichardson, W. Lane, W. Lowades, G. and T. Wil- 
 kie, P. M'Queen, C. D. Pinquenit, Cadell and Pa- 
 vies, and S. Bagster." 
 
 A long list of names, of which we know abso- 
 lutely nothing, except the certainty that every one 
 of them might be found in some churchward. Op- 
 posite, a frontispiece, representing a charming young 
 lady in hoop, long waist, and turreted hair, stepping 
 out of a coach, over one prostrate wounded gentle- 
 man, into the arms of another, who is magnificent in 
 wig, queue, and sword; in coat long-vested, long- 
 
THE MAN OF MEN. 261 
 
 tailed, breeches, stockings, and shoe-buckles. Be- 
 hind, two other figures on horseback appear dis- 
 coursing amiably together, with great composure 
 considering the circumstances, and pointing admir- 
 ingly to the aforesaid standing gentleman. Need 
 we doubt his identity? He is he must be Sir 
 Charles Grandison. 
 
 His name, at least, is familiar still. It has be- 
 come proverbial. Its very sound conveys images 
 of courtesy, elegance, loyalty, chivalry the chiv- 
 alry of the era when, " during the troubles in Scot- 
 land this summer," Prince Charlie's friends died 
 kissing the white rose at their button-holes the 
 loyalty with which King George and Queen Caro- 
 line, going in state to hear u the oratorios of young 
 Mr. Handel," were regarded as beings of a superior 
 order, in whom the divine right of kings was un- 
 questioned and unquestionable. 
 
 To that special age does he belong, this faultless 
 hero, exact in all religious, moral, and social duties, 
 blameless of life and conversation, incapable alike 
 of breaking the smallest rule of etiquette and the 
 Ten Commandments; rich, handsome, well born, 
 well bred, fitted by all combinations of nature and 
 circumstance to be the master of Grandison Hall. 
 But we are forestalling the story a thing not to 
 be endured in this century-after-date criticism upon 
 a work of which few readers may even know the 
 general outline of the plot* 
 
262 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 It is of the simplest kind. Harriet Byron, a 
 lovely young Northamptonshire lady, long orphan- 
 ed, but blessed with a circle of adoring relatives ; a 
 grandmother Shirley, an aunt, uncle, and cousins 
 Selby, and a godfather Deane, goes up to London 
 in order to avoid three lovers, and is shortly haunt- 
 ed by about six more. All are refused, and not un- 
 kindly, though a little saucy vanity peeps out in 
 this provincial Helen, every body's darling, who 
 sets all hearts aflame. But the boldest and wicked- 
 est of the lovers, Sir Hargrave Pollexfen, carries 
 her off, in order to compel her into matrimony. 
 "She is timely rescued by an unknown young gen- 
 tleman, who conveys her home to his sisters, and 
 wins her eternal gratitude. Of course, this grati- 
 tude very speedily becomes love, for the gentleman 
 is Sir Charles Grandison. 
 
 All is now over with our saucy little Harriet. 
 The gradual change from girlish conceit to humil- 
 ity from mischievousness to meekness from an 
 excellent good opinion of herself to an absorbing 
 admiration of somebody else, is admirably done. 
 One wonders how honest old Samuel got his accu- 
 rate knowledge of girl-kind, though not of woman- 
 kind. "The frankest of women," which she cer- 
 tainly is, finds her love apparently unreturned; 
 and after various mysteries, and much "brother- 
 and- sisterly" nonsense, which indeed all the char- 
 acters are very prone to, Sir Charles delicately in- 
 
THE MAN OF MEN. 263 
 
 forms her of a certain Italian lady, Clementina, 
 who, hopelessly loving him, has gone mad for his 
 sake, and whom he feels himself bound to marry. 
 He tells the whole story to the girl whom he him- 
 self really loves, but dares not woo poor Harriet 
 Byron, and asks her advice upon it, which she 
 gives (good generous soul ! now raised by sorrow 
 far above all her little follies), namely, that he 
 should go at once and marry the Italian lady. 
 
 This situation, and a few parting scenes between 
 the unacknowledged, honor-silenced lovers, whom 
 all their mutual friends are longing to see united, 
 is the finest portion of the book. Sir Charles, gen- 
 erous, tender, and full of knightly honor, is modesty 
 itself toward both women, and, indeed, toward all 
 the many fair ones who bestow on him their regard. 
 He pathetically observes, poor fellow ! " that he 
 has suffered so much from good women ;" while the 
 fond, hapless Harriet has just pride enough to hide 
 her affection from its object, and nobility enough to 
 follow his lead in the cruel struggle between duty 
 and love. Few authors have conceived a finer 
 "position," or maintained it more successfully. 
 
 But afterward, interest wanes, and the story drags 
 in a manner intolerable to modern readers, who 
 like to gallop through three volumes of exciting 
 fiction at the rate of a volume per hour. Conver- 
 sation after conversation between Sir Charles and 
 the noble Italian family, who are thankful for even 
 
264 STUDIES FKOM LIFE. 
 
 a heretic son-in-law in order to save their Clemen- 
 tina; between him and Clementina, who, loving 
 only " his Mind" (with a capital M), refuses her 
 beloved for conscience' sake ; his pleadings her 
 pleadings every body's pleadings scene upon 
 scene of " exaltation," generosity, and woe, termin- 
 ate in an agreement that the Chevalier Grandison 
 shall become her " fourth brother" (again our au- 
 thor's favorite adopted relationship), and return to 
 England a free man. Upon which, nothing loth, 
 though somewhat distracted by this " double love," 
 he, after amiably declining a third too-devoted lady, 
 Olivia, offers himself to Harriet Byron, or, rather, to 
 her grandmother, and, after a whole volume full of 
 punctilio and hesitation, finally marries her. 
 
 Finally, said we? good Mr. Richardson knows 
 not the meaning of the word. After the marriage, 
 we have a volume and a quarter more. Lady 
 Clementina, in an accession of insanity, flies to En- 
 gland, is met and protected by her " fourth brother," 
 comforted by his wife, and restored to her friends, 
 with a good hope that she will neither die nor be- 
 come a nun, but the wife of a faithful Italian lover. 
 Emily Jervois Sir Charles's ward and another of 
 his involuntary lady-killings also survives to mar- 
 ry some one else ; his sisters, Lady L. and Lady G., 
 take a brief opportunity between the numerous 
 weddings to present him with a nephew and niece; 
 and other minor characters bad and good, have their 
 
THE MAN OF MEN. 265 
 
 affairs settled. At last, the book ends quite abrupt- 
 ly ; just as you have grown to like its lengthiness, 
 and expect it to go on, winding and unwinding in- 
 terminable histories like life, lo, it ceases! Sir 
 Charles and Lady Grandison their aristocratic kin 
 their worthy Northamptonshire relatives their 
 friends and acquaintance, good and bad all vanish 
 into air. You close volume seven omitting prob- 
 ably the 117 pages of " Index, Historical and Char- 
 acteristical" and feel that you have performed a 
 moral duty you have read Sir Charles Grandison. 
 
 Now, one asks, in what lies the charm of this 
 book, to have become one of the remarkable facts 
 of literature? for such it is, and all the ridicule of 
 Young England will never put it down. Style is 
 not its chief merit, for it rarely rises above the epis- 
 tolary-conversational, as practiced in the time of our 
 great-grandfathers and grandmothers, who certainly 
 wrote, and rnay be supposed to have talked, after 
 that pattern. As for story, the plot is slender as a 
 thread, and transparent as daylight ; from the very 
 first volume an acute novel-reading child of twelve 
 would guess the end. 
 
 The secret is that, with all its extravagances, or 
 what seem so to us, the book has intense vitality. 
 It is a picture, pre-Raphaelite in its minuteness, of j 
 English life as existing a century ago. We feel 
 throughout that, down to the merest accessories, the 
 people therein are living people ; that, in spite of 
 M 
 
266 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 their "Sir," "Madam," "Best of men," "Loveliest 
 of -women" their hoops, wigs, swords, and ruffles, 
 they are true flesh and blood ; more so than scores 
 of the adorable women and impossible men who 
 yearly figure through the twenty "best novels of 
 the season." 
 
 Earely in any fiction does one meet with such a 
 number of characters, all so strongly individual, 
 and varied as nature herself. From the mere 
 sketches, such as droll Uncle Selby, to the second- 
 ary personages, as the inimitable Charlotte Grandi- 
 son, up to the all-perfect pair she, beloved of all 
 men, and he, admired of all women round whom 
 every body else is perpetually circumvolving in at- 
 titudes of adoration they are thorough human be- 
 ings ; odd as they appear in some things, one feels 
 that one's revered ancestors of a hundred years 
 back might nay, must have been just like them. 
 
 And for the long-windedness of the history, is 
 not life itself long-winded ? Do we not take up 
 threads of interest, follow them a while, drop them 
 or lose them, find them again, and again they van- 
 ish ? Alas for novelists and dramatists ! few real 
 histories furnish a complete plot, satisfactory in all 
 its parts, with a death or marriage to wind up with. 
 Life is perpetually twisting and twining, weaving 
 and unweaving, until at last it breaks off suddenly, 
 or we from it, and it is puzzled over no more. The 
 author of Sir Charles Grandison mav have had 
 
THE MAN OF MEN. 267 
 
 neither invention nor imagination, but he certainly 
 had the faculty of beholding life as it is, and paint- 
 ing it as he saw it. 
 
 And what an eye for character? Witness Char- 
 lotte Grandison, afterward Lady G., with her loveli- 
 ness, her mischief, her irresistible drollery all but, 
 yet never quite heartless; her half-compelled mar- 
 riage with the honest, devoted Lord G.; her tor- 
 menting of him, and her struggles for matrimonial 
 victory, till at last conscientiousness conquers, and 
 "my fool," "my poor creature," becomes heartily 
 loved as " my odd creature,' 7 " my good man," and 
 the papa of "my little marmozet." With all her 
 naughtiness, Lady G. is the most bewitching and 
 lovable personage in the book worth a dozen Har- 
 riet Byrons. Clementina, the next most prominent 
 sketch, with her romantic love, her beautiful bigot- 
 ry, and ecstasy of pious self-renunciation, is, though 
 slightly sentimental, very touching. Some bits of 
 her madness almost remind one of Ophelia. There 
 is an ideal loftiness and purity about her, which 
 reconciles one to Sir Charles's rather ridiculous po- 
 sition as somebody suggests the "ass between 
 two bundles of hay." You feel that this venera- 
 tion for 
 
 "His spirit's mate, compassionate and wise" 
 
 " the noblest of women," as he continually calls 
 her, is quite natural, and will never interfere with 
 
268 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 the love he bears to the " happiest of women" 
 his wife Harriet. 
 
 Harriet Byron, regarded as a woman, is her sex 
 will say a failure. Trying to soften her angelic 
 perfections by giving her a few foibles and " femal- 
 ities," as uncle Selby would call them, the author 
 sometimes makes her very much like a pretty ami- 
 able fool. She is always trying to act "greatly," 
 and never managing it except in a passive sense ; 
 and, though this subdued part may be necessary in 
 point of art query, did our author ever think of 
 art? one feels as if a little more were necessary, 
 even to constitute her as moon to the hero's sun. 
 One instinctively pictures her at forty fair and fat 
 Lady Grandison of Grandison Hall chaperon- 
 ing the Misses and indulging the Masters Grandi- 
 son a little foolish sometimes, as people always 
 admired and petted are prone to be ; a little com- 
 monplace and conventional, yet most sweet and 
 good ; in short, the mirror of matronhood, whose 
 whole life is absorbed in one belief that the man of 
 men the "entire and perfect chrysolite" is Sir 
 Charles Grandison. 
 
 Besides its infinite variety of character, another 
 charm of this old book is the curious and evidently 
 exact picture it gives of the manners and customs, 
 principles and sentiments of a time old enough to 
 be now nearly forgotten, yet too modern to have 
 become traditional or historical. We see, as be- 
 
THE MAN OF MEN. 269 
 
 fore noticed, the accurate presentment of our great- 
 grandfathers and great-grandmothers in their daily 
 life. They must have been at once a great deal 
 more simple and more formal than we. 
 
 For instance, the "punctilios" of courtship and 
 matrimony strike us moderns as particularly droll. 
 Love-making no, let us keep to the proper word 
 courtship for any thing so undignified as love 
 seems never to be thought of is apparently the 
 one business of young men and young women. 
 The latter, from their earliest youth, are educated 
 with one end to be married. Old maids are quite 
 remarkable facts. Every young gentlewoman is 
 openly attended by her suitors her "fellows, 77 as 
 Charlotte Grandison irreverently calls them who, 
 according to their natures, sue her, die for her, 
 threaten her, squabble over her, and altogether 
 keep up the sort of behavior for which we should 
 now call in Policeman X. or Detective Field. 
 
 For all these vagaries, manages de convenance 
 seem by no means so discreditable as we nowa- 
 days are disposed to assert, however we may act. 
 Fortunes and settlements are openly discussed by 
 the most devoted couples. " Treaties 77 not merely 
 from a gentleman for a lady, but vice versa are fre- 
 quently set on foot by the friends of the parties. 
 Thus poor Sir Charles has to decline proposals for 
 his hand from several enamored ladies and their 
 relatives. Even the modest Miss Harriet, when her 
 
270 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 sweet, saucy stoniness toward mankind is conquer- 
 ed, and herself "entangled in a hopeless passion," 
 does not scruple to avow it to about fifteen people, 
 nor to take counsel from all her own relatives and 
 those of the still silent gentleman as to her chances 
 of his heart. Of her own so as he does not know 
 it she seems not the least ashamed ; for, as she 
 naively observes, "Is not the man Sir Charles 
 Grand ison ?" 
 
 This odd mixture of freedom and formality per- 
 vades every thing. Young ladies, married after a 
 fortnight's wooing, snub their unfortunate husbands 
 for daring to beg or steal a kiss in presence of the 
 waiting-woman. Young gentlemen, a day or two 
 before marriage, while actually venturing in the 
 retirement of the " cedar parlor" upon the above 
 terrible enormity, still address the lady as " Mad- 
 am," "Dearest Madam," " My beloved Miss Byron." 
 Husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, never 
 call one another by any thing but their titles as 
 " Sir Charles," "Lady L.," "My Lord G. ;" and nev- 
 er, even in moments of the deepest emotion, forget 
 to bow over one another's hands. 
 
 This queer incongruity affects us with an amused 
 wonderment. We pause to consider whether we 
 have grown wiser or more foolish than our progen- 
 itors; and also what our "dear distant descend- 
 ants" will think of our manners and customs, modes 
 of action and tone of feeling as portrayed in those 
 
THE MAN OF MEN. 271 
 
 present-day novels which shall survive the century. 
 And here, judging them by the only secure test of 
 permanent fame accurate, unexaggerated nature 
 the same in all ages, though modified by the out- 
 ward impress of the time we can not but suspect 
 that their number will be few ; that many very 
 clever and amusing popularities of to-day, will slip 
 into utter oblivion to-morrow, or be preserved as 
 mere caricatures, and laughed at quite as much as 
 we now laugh at Sir Charles Grandison. 
 
 The book itself may move our risibility, but the 
 hero himself never. With all the flourish of trum- 
 pets that heralds him the perpetual chorus of 
 praise that is dinned into our ears about him the 
 raptures that all his friends go into concerning ev- 
 ery thing he is, and does, and says, and the slight- 
 ly " priggish" (oh, could he have heard the slang 
 word !) way in which he himself is perpetually ut- 
 tering grand moral sentiments, and perfectly con- 
 scious of every good action he performs still, we 
 are compelled to own that Sir Charles Grandison. 
 justifies the universal adoration that he really is 
 the man of men. 
 
 Thoroughly noble, just, and generous; pure 
 through the temptations of a licentious time ; as- 
 serting true honor against all the shame of it then 
 current; polite without insincerity; pious without 
 either intolerance or cant ; severe in virtue, yet 
 pitiful to the most vicious; faithful to his friends, 
 
272 STUDIES FKOM LIFE 
 
 and forgiving to his enemies, till his last foe is con* 
 quered by the force of kindness; loved by all 
 women, admired by all men, yet never losing a 
 sweet humility, which, coming out as it does at 
 times to his nearest ties his revered Dr. Bartlett 
 and his beloved Harriet must, we feel assured, be 
 always his before his God. The marvel is how the 
 little fat bookseller, whom nobody ever accuses of 
 genius, could have conceived such an ideal of a true 
 Christian gentleman. 
 
 Hear what he says himself on the subject 
 worthy Samuel whom a late serial tale has pic- 
 tured in his habit as he lived, strutting through 
 Tunbridge streets with a bevy of admiring woman- 
 kind following the creator of Sir Charles Grandi- 
 son. 
 
 " The editor of the foregoing collection has the 
 more readily undertaken to publish it" [amiable 
 pretense] " because he thinks human nature has 
 often, of late, been shown in a light too degrading ; 
 and he hopes, from this series of letters, it will be 
 seen that characters may be good without being 
 unnatural Notwithstanding, it has been ob- 
 served by some that, in general, Sir Charles Grandi- 
 son approaches too near to the faultless character 
 which critics censure as being above nature. Yet 
 it ought to be observed, too, that he performs no 
 one action which it is not in the power of any man 
 in his situation to perform, and that he checks and 
 
THE MAN OF MEN. 273 
 
 restrains himself in no one instance in which it is 
 not the duty of a prudent and good man to restrain 
 himself.' 7 
 
 Excellently and truthfully argued, dear old Sam- 
 uel. No one can read thy musty old tomes with- 
 out the conviction that thy stout body must have 
 inclosed a greater, purer, more Christian soul than 
 the be-wigged lords and high-heeled ladies who 
 sailed down Tunbridge streets, the clever wits and 
 satirical or sentimental poets that enlivened Lon- 
 don, nay, even the admired Dr. Johnson himself, 
 ever dreamed of. 
 
 It is curious to trace how simple amid an age of 
 formalities how liberal in the most ultra days of 
 bigoted religionism is this old man's ideal of good- 
 ness, as presented in his hero : how he makes him 
 pardon the crudest injuries, treat kindly the lowest 
 of the low, hold out repentance and atonement to 
 the vilest of the vile ; in all things pursuing a di- 
 rect course ; being, as he says, " a law unto him- 
 self," amenable only to his Maker, and afraid of 
 nothing except to sin against his Maker. In his 
 actions as in his character, as son, brother, friend, 
 husband fulfilling, instinctively as it were, the one 
 law of true love and true lovableness, "esteeming 
 others better than himself" he is the noblest of all 
 fictitious heroes, ancient or modern, with whom we 
 are acquainted. 
 
 Curious, too, to see how far in advance of his age, 
 M2 
 
274 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 in some things, is this Sir Charles Grandison, or 
 rather Mr. Samuel Richardson, who, in the "con- 
 cluding note," goes on to say, with reference to a 
 special point in the book and in the character of 
 the hero : 
 
 "It has been objected by some persons that a 
 man less able by strength or skill to repel an af- 
 front than Sir Charles appears to have been, could 
 not, with such honor, have extricated himself out 
 of difficulties on refusing a challenge. And this is 
 true, meaning by honor the favorable opinion of 
 the European world from the time of its being 
 overrun by Gothic barbarism down to the present. 
 But as that notion of honor is evidently an absurd 
 and mischievous one, and yet multitudes are at a 
 loss to get over it, the rejection and confutation of 
 it by a person whom it was visible the considera- 
 tion of his own safety did not influence, must surely 
 be of no small weight. And when it is once allowed 
 that there are cases when these polite invitations to 
 murder" [bravo, Samuel !] " may, consistently with 
 honor, be disregarded, a little attention will easily 
 find others: vulgar notions will insensibly wear 
 out, and more ground be gained by degrees than 
 could have been attempted with hope of success at 
 once, till at length all may come to stand on the 
 firm footing of reason and religion. In the mean 
 time, they who are less qualified to carry off right 
 behavior with honor in the eye of common judges 
 
THE MAN OF MEN. 275 
 
 will, however, be esteemed for it by every serious 
 and prudent person, and perhaps inwardly by many 
 who are mean enough to join outwardly in blaming 
 them." 
 
 A bold doctrine to set forth in the year 1796 
 the date of this seventh edition. The first edition 
 must have somewhat astonished the "gentlemen" 
 of the period. 
 
 Great indeed must have been the influence of this 
 book in its day a day when all new books, and 
 especially novels, were comparatively rare. It ap- 
 peared originally in serial volumes ; and Sir John 
 Herschel has somewhere related that when the pe- 
 nultimate volume, containing the marriage of Sir 
 Charles and his Harriet, reached a certain enthusi- 
 astic English village, the inhabitants immediately 
 set all the bells a ringing! In any case, it is easy 
 to imagine its universal notoriety; how the "fine 
 gentlemen' 7 read it over their chocolate, and the 
 ladies over the dressing of their hair; how even 
 young gentlewomen of tender age were allowed to 
 sit poring over it in old-fashioned gardens or upon 
 prim high-backed chairs ; for it was notable then, 
 as now, as being one of the few fictions of the time 
 which contains nothing objectionable. There is 
 hardly a word in it that we, more sensitive, if not 
 more really modest than our great-grandmothers, 
 would scruple to read aloud to our sons and daugh- 
 ters. 
 
276 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 The former bless the lads! if at all given 
 to "fast" ways and satirical young Englandism. 
 might probably make a great mock at this digni- 
 fied, decorous, bowing and hand-kissing, reverently 
 behaved and pure-minded young gentleman of a 
 past century, who is not ashamed to honor his par- 
 ents even a bad father to love his sisters, and to 
 respect all women; who, a few days before mar- 
 riage, can say to his wife alas ! you poor lads, how 
 few of you will be able to say it to your wives ; and 
 yet the sentence ought to be written in golden let- 
 ters upon every one of your consciences, for it is 
 the utmost glory of manhood : 
 
 " Give me leave to boast it is my boast that I 
 can look back on my past life, and bless God that 
 I never, from childhood to manhood, willfully gave 
 pain to either the motherly or sisterly heart, nor 
 from manhood to the present hour to any other 
 woman." 
 
 But, whatever the boys might feel, we are certain 
 our girls would be, every one of them, in love with 
 Sir Charles Grandison. 
 
 Heaven help us ! are good men become so rare, 
 that the mere presentment of such in a book is to 
 be scoffed at by many, and regarded by almost all 
 as unnatural and impossible ? a merely good man, 
 not one whit better (as the author himself suggests) 
 than all good men ought to be? We believe not. 
 We believe that neither in this, nor in the past 
 
THE MAN OF MEN. 277 
 
 generation, are honor and virtue left without a wit- 
 ness without many witnesses. Men not altogether 
 perfect the ideal must always be a step beyond the 
 real, or it is no ensample at all but honest men 
 and true, who, taking up such a tale as this, need 
 neither blush nor deride as they read; for people 
 very often take refuge in derision when an inward 
 stinging of conscience tells them they ought to 
 blush. 
 
 And since on the mothers of a generation depends 
 much of its future glory, it lies in the power of the 
 mothers of ours to cultivate in their boys all that 
 Sir Charles Grandison's dying mother so proudly 
 praises : 
 
 "His duty to his father and to me; his love of 
 his sisters ; the generosity of his temper ; his love 
 of truth ; his modesty, courage, benevolence, steadi- 
 ness of mind, docility, and other great and amiable 
 qualities, by which he gives a moral assurance of 
 making A GOOD MAN." 
 
 Observe, not a great man, a clever and brilliant 
 man, a prosperous or fortunate man simply a good 
 man. If women took this more to heart, haply 
 there would not nowadays be so many sons who 
 wring and break the hearts of their mothers. 
 
 But whether or no tfilere be living good men, a 
 novel with a good man so nobly depicted therein is 
 in itself a great reality ; for an abstract truth learn- 
 ed from fiction is often a clearer and more absolute 
 
278 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 verity than a mere literal fact. As a reverent or- 
 thodox Christian was once heard to say, Christiani- 
 ty would be none the less true, in its essence, if the 
 whole of the New Testament history were an in- 
 spired parable. 
 
 So, whether or not he is, or ever can be, a living 
 possibility, we feel that, as an example of moral 
 beautjr, this man of men is, according to the well- 
 known phrase, "riot for an age, but for all time;" 
 that, in spite of lengthinesses, absurdities, extrava- 
 gances, some belonging to the period, and some to 
 the author's own idiosyncrasy this history is val- 
 uable and veritable. Hundreds of our young men 
 and maidens who stupefy their brains, fire their all 
 too tindery imaginations, and confuse their still un- 
 settled notions of right and wrong, over a hetero- 
 geneous mass of modern novels, would be none the 
 worse, but all the better, for hunting out this old- 
 fashioned tale, and carefully studying the character 
 of that almost forgotten ideal of our great-grand- 
 mothers Sir Charles Grandison. 
 
LOST. 279 
 
 o0t. 
 
 LOOKING over the Times' advertisements, one's 
 eye often catches such as the following: "Lost, a 
 Youth' 7 (while ships and schools exist, not so very 
 mysterious); " Missing, an Elderly Gentleman" (who 
 has apparently walked quietly off to his city-office 
 one morning, and never been heard of more) ; or 
 merely, "Left his Home, John So-and-So," who, 
 after many entreaties to return thereto, may have 
 the pleasure of seeing, by succeeding advertise- 
 ments of "Keward Offered," whether he is valued 
 by his disconsolate kindred at ten, fifteen, or fifty 
 pounds. Other "bits" there are at which we feel 
 it cruel to smile : one, for instance, which appeared 
 for months on the first day of the month, saying, 
 "If you are not at home by" such a date, "I shall 
 have left England in search of you ;" and proceed- 
 ing to explain that he or she had left orders for 
 that periodical advertisement, giving also addresses 
 of banker, etc., in case of the other's coming home 
 meantime all with the curiously business-like, and 
 yet pathetic providing against all chances which 
 rarely springs from any source save the strongest 
 attachment. 
 
280 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 All newspaper readers must have noticed, in mys- 
 terious accidents or murders, what numbers of peo- 
 ple are sure to come forward in hopes if identify- 
 ing the unknown "body." In a late case, when a 
 young woman was found brutally shot in a wood, 
 it was remarkable how many came from all parts 
 of the country to view the corpse persons who 
 had missing relatives bearing the same initials as 
 those on the victim's linen parents whose daughter 
 had gone to service and then been entirely lost sight 
 of friends with a friend gone to meet her hus- 
 band, and embark for Australia, but who had never 
 embarked or been heard of again, and so on, all 
 seeking some clew to a mournful, never-solved 
 mystery. 
 
 But these things suggest the grave reflection 
 what a number of people there must be in the 
 world who are, not figuratively or poetically, but 
 literally, "lost;" who by some means or other, ac- 
 cident, intention, carelessness, misfortune, or crime, 
 have slipped out of the home circle, or the wider 
 round of friendship or acquaintanceship, and never 
 reappeared more ; whose place has gradually been 
 filled up ; whose very memory is almost forgotten, 
 and against whose name and date of birth in the 
 family Bible if they ever had a family and a Bible 
 stands neither the brief momentous annotation 
 "Married" etc., nor the still briefer, and often much 
 safer and happier inscription "Died" nothing save 
 
LOST. 281 
 
 the ominous, pathetic blank, which only the unveil- 
 ed secrets of the Last Day will ever fill up. 
 
 In the present times, when every body is running 
 to and fro when, instead of the rule, it is the ex- 
 ception to meet with any untraveled person when 
 almost every large family has one or more of its 
 members scattered in several quarters of the civil- 
 ized or uncivilized world cases such as these must 
 occur often. Indeed, nearly every person's knowl- 
 edge or experience could furnish some. What a 
 list it would make! worse, if possible, than the 
 terrible "List of Killed and Wounded" which dims 
 with pity many an uninterested eye, or the " List 
 of Passengers and Crew" after an ocean shipwreck, 
 where common sense forebodes that "missing" must 
 necessarily imply death how met, God alone 
 knows! yet, for the last comfort of survivors, a 
 safe, sure, and speedy death. But in this unwritten 
 list of "lost," death is a certainty never to be at- 
 tained, not even when such certainty would be al- 
 most as blessed as life or happy return. Perhaps 
 even more blessed. 
 
 For in these cases the "lost" are not alone to be 
 considered. By that strange yet merciful contra- 
 diction of feeling which often makes the reckless 
 the most lovable, and the froward the most beloved, 
 it rarely happens that the most Cain-like vagabond 
 that wanders over the face of the earth has not 
 some human being who cares for him in greater 
 
282 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 or less degree, yet still cares for him. Nor, abjur- 
 ing this view of the subject, can we take the strictly 
 practical side of it without perceiving that it is next 
 to impossible for any human being so completely 
 to isolate himself from his species that his life or . 
 death shall not affect any other human being in 
 any possible way. 
 
 Doubtless many persuade themselves of this fact, 
 through bravado or misanthropy, or the thoughtless 
 selfishness which a wandering life almost invariably 
 superinduces. They maintain the doctrine which, 
 when a man has been tossed up and down the world, 
 in India, America, Australia, in all sorts of circum- 
 stances and among all sorts of people, he is natu- 
 rally prone to believe the one great truth of life 
 " Every man for himself, and God for us all." But 
 it is not a truth ; it is a lie. Where every man lives 
 only for himself, it is not God, but the devil " for 
 us all." 
 
 It is worth while, in thinking of those who are 
 thus voluntarily "lost," to suggest this to the great 
 tide of our emigrating youth, who go and .God 
 speed them if they go honestly to make in a new 
 country the bread they can not find here. In all 
 the changes of work and scene, many are prone 
 gradually to forget; some to believe themselves 
 forgotten ; home fades away in distance letters 
 grow fewer and fewer. The wanderer begins to feel 
 himself a waif and stray. Like Diekens's poor Jo, 
 
LOST. 283 
 
 he has got into a habit of being " chivied and chiv- 
 ied," and kept " moving on," till he has learned to 
 feel no particular tie or interest in any body or any 
 thing, and therefore concludes nobody can have 
 any tie or interest in him. So he just writes home 
 by rare accident, when he happens to remember it, 
 or never writes at all vanishes slowly from every 
 body's reach, or drops suddenly out of the world, 
 nobody knows how, or when, or where, nor ever 
 can know, till the earth and sea give up their dead : 
 
 "But long they looked, and feared, and wept, 
 
 Within his distant home, 
 And dreamed, and started as they slept, 
 For joy that he was come." 
 
 Alas ! how many a household, how many a heart, 
 has borne that utterly irremediable and intermin- 
 able anguish, bitterer far than the anguish over a 
 grave, which Wordsworth has faintly indicated in 
 The Affection of Margaret : 
 
 "Where art thou, my beloved son? 
 
 Where art thou, worse to me than dead? 
 Oh, find me prosperous or undone ! 
 
 Or if the grave be now thy bed, 
 Why am I ignorant of the same, 
 That I may rest, and neither blame 
 Nor sorrow may attend thy name ? 
 
 " I look for ghosts, but none will force 
 
 Their way to me. Tis falsely said 
 That there was ever intercourse 
 Betwixt the living and the dead, 
 
284 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 For surely then I should have sight 
 Of him I wait for day and night, 
 With love and longings infinite." 
 
 It may seem a small lesson to draw from an ag- 
 ony so great, but surely one can not too strongly 
 impress upon our wandering youth, who go to earn 
 their living across the seas in the Australian bush, 
 or the Canadian forests, or the greater wildernesses 
 of foreign cities east and west, that they ought, 
 every where and under all circumstances, to leave 
 a clew whereby their friends may be certain to hear 
 of them, living or dead. That if it is the duty of a 
 solitary man or woman, while living, so to arrange 
 affairs that his or her death shall cause least pain or 
 trouble to any one else, surely this is ten-fold the 
 duty of those who go abroad that, whatever hap- 
 pens, they may be to those that love them only the 
 dead, never the " lost." 
 
 Sometimes under this category come persons of 
 totally different fate and yet the same whose true 
 history is rarely found out till it is ended, and per- 
 haps not then people who have sprung up nobody 
 knows how, who have nobody belonging to them 
 neither ancestors nor descendants though as soon 
 as they are gone hundreds appear to claim heirship 
 with them. 
 
 Of such is a case now pending, well known in 
 the west of Scotland, when the "next of kin" to an 
 almost fabulous amount of property is advertised 
 
LOST. 285 
 
 for by government once in seven years, and where 
 scores of Scotch cousins indefinitely removed peri- 
 odically turn up, and spend hundreds of pounds in 
 proving, or failing to prove for all have failed 
 hitherto their relationship to the "dear deceased" 
 an old gentleman in India, who neither there nor 
 in his native Scotland had a single soul belonging 
 to him, or caring to "call cousins" with him; who, 
 indeed, had never been heard of till he died, worth 
 a million or so, leaving all the wealth he had labor- 
 ed to amass to Nobody. Truly this poor solitary 
 nabob may be put among the melancholy record 
 of "lost," 
 
 Similar instances of fortunes, greater or less, 
 "going a begging" for want of heirs, are common 
 enough commoner than people have the least idea 
 of. Government annually pockets very honestly, 
 and after long search and patient waiting a con- 
 siderable sum, composed of unclaimed bank divi- 
 dends, and real and personal property of all kinds, 
 the heir or heirs to which it is impossible to find. 
 Among these, the amount of dead sailors 7 pay is 
 said to be a remarkable item thousands of pounds 
 thus yearly lapsing to government, because all the 
 ingenuity of the shipping-master, into whose hands 
 the money is required to be paid, can not find any 
 heir to poor departed "Bill" or "Jack" whose 
 place of birth has likely been never heard of who 
 has gone under so many aliases that even his right 
 
286 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 surname is scarcely discoverable, and often has 
 lived, died, and been buried as simple "Jack" or 
 "Bill," without any surname at all. 
 
 This indifference to an hereditary patronymic is a 
 curious characteristic of all wanderers of the lower 
 class. Soldiers, sailors, and navvies engaged abroad, 
 will often be found to have gone by half a dozen 
 different surnames, or to have allowed their original 
 name to be varied ad libitum, as from Donald to 
 M 'Donald, and back again to Donaldson, possibly 
 ending as O'Donnell, or plain Don. Frequently, in 
 engaging themselves, they will give any new name 
 that comes uppermost Smith, Brown, Jones ; or 
 will change names with a " mate," after the German 
 fashion of ratifying the closest bond of friendship, 
 thereby producing inextricable confusion, should 
 they chance to die, leaving any thing to be in- 
 herited. 
 
 Otherwise of course it matters not they just 
 drop out of life, of no more account than a pebble 
 dropped into the deep sea. And yet each must 
 have had parents, may have had brothers and sis- 
 ters, might have had wife and children, and all the 
 close links of home. Much as we pity those who 
 lose all these the bonds, duties, and cares which, 
 however heavy sometimes, are a "man's greatest safe- 
 guard and strength, without which he is but a root- 
 less tree, a dead log drifted about on the waters 
 still more may we pity those, in all ranks and posi- 
 
LOST. 287 
 
 tions of life, who are thus " lost" not in any dis- 
 creditable sense, perhaps from no individual fault, 
 but from some fatal conjuncture of circumstances, 
 or from being "too easy," "too good," "nobody's 
 enemy but their own." Still, by some means or 
 other God help them they have let themselves 
 drop out of the chain of life like a bead dropped 
 off a string, and are " lost." 
 
 Equally so are some, of whom few of us are so 
 happy as never to have counted any, whom the 
 American poet Bryant, already quoted, touchingly 
 characterizes as "the living lost." Not the fallen, 
 the guilty, or even the prodigal, so degraded that 
 only at the gates of the grave and from One Father 
 can he look for that forgiveness to grant which, 
 " while he was yet afar off, his Father saio him" not 
 only these, but others, who bear no outward sign of 
 their condition ; whom the world calls fortunate, 
 happy, righteous and so they may be toward 
 many, yet to a few, familiar with their deepest 
 hearts, knowing all they were and might have been, 
 still be irrevocably, hopelessly, "the living lost" 
 lost as utterly as if the grave had swallowed them 
 up, mourned as bitterly as one mourneth for those 
 that depart to return no more. 
 
 Every body owns some of these kindred, whom 
 prosperity has taught that " bluid" is not " thicker 
 than water;" friends who have long ceased to own 
 aught of friendship but its name, perhaps even not 
 
288 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 that ; lovers who meet accidentally as strangers ; 
 brothers and sisters who pass one another in the 
 street with averted faces the same faces which a 
 few years back "cuddled" cosily up to the same 
 mother's breast. 
 
 These things are sad sad and strange so strange 
 that we hardly believe them in youth, at least not 
 as possible to happen to us ; and yet they do hap- 
 pen, and we are obliged to bear them obliged to 
 endure losses worse than death, and never seem as 
 if we had lost any thing smilingly to take the 
 credit of possessions that we know are no longer 
 ours, or quietly to close accounts, pay an honorable 
 dividend, cheat nobody, and sit down honest beg- 
 gars but the crash is over ! Most of us as at the 
 end of the year we are prone, morally as well as 
 arithmetically, to calculate our havings and spend- 
 ings, and strike the balance of our property are 
 also prone and it may be good for us too to 
 linger a little over the one brief item, "Lost." 
 
 But in all good lives, even as in all well-balanced, 
 prudent ledgers, this item is far less heavy, in the 
 sum-total, than at first appears ay, though therein 
 we have to reckon deaths many, partings many, in- 
 fidelities and estrangements not a few; though, if 
 we be not ourselves among the list of the lost, we 
 have no guaranty against being numbered among 
 that of the sorrowful losers. 
 
 The most united family may have to count among 
 
LOST. 289 
 
 its members one "black sheep," pitied or blamed, 
 and by a few lingeringly loved, returning at inter- 
 vals, generally to every body's consternation and 
 pain, at last returning no more. The faithfulest 
 of friends may come one day to look in his friend's 
 face, and detect there something new and strange, 
 which he shrinks from as from an unholy spirit 
 which has entered and possessed the familiar form. 
 The fondest and best of mothers may live to miss, 
 silently and tearlessly, from her Christmas - table, 
 some one child, who she knows, and knows that 
 all her other children know, is more welcome in 
 absence than in presence, whom to have laid sinless 
 in a baby's coffin, and buried years ago, would have 
 been as nothing nothing. 
 
 Yet all these things must be, and we must bear 
 them, that in the mysterious working of evil with 
 good we may come out purified as with fire. The 
 comfort is, that in its total account of gains and 
 losses, every honest and tender soul will find out, 
 soon or late, that the irremediable catalogue of 
 the latter is, we repeat, far lighter than at first 
 seems. 
 
 For who are the "lost?" Not the dead, who 
 "rest from their labors," and with whom to die is 
 often to be forever beloved. Not the far away, who, 
 keeping and kept in fond remembrance, are often 
 nearer than those who sit at hearth and board be- 
 side us. Not even the temporarily estranged ; for 
 N 
 
290 STUDIES FROM LIFE. 
 
 faith and patience will often bring them back again, 
 and teach us 
 
 " How like a new gift is old love restored ; 
 How seems it richer, though the ver^ same." 
 
 Never need those fear to be either lost or losers 
 who, in the words of our English Prayer-book, 
 can pray and pray together that "amid all the 
 chances and changes of this mortal life, our hearts 
 may surely there be fixed where true joys are to 
 be found" where, whatever may be the " tongue 
 of men or of angels" that we shall have learned to 
 speak with, then we may be quite sure that there 
 shall be in it no such word as "fostf." 
 
 THE END. 
 
BY CONSTANCE F. WOOLSOJST. 
 
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