THOMAS L. MASSON .X^. fi/- THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES ^v AMERICAN ORATIONS, to Illustrate American Politi- cal History. Edited, with Introductions, by Professor A tax- ANUEK Johnston. Three vols., i6mo, $3.75 and $4.50. BRITISH ORATIONS. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Professor Charles K. Adams. Three vols., i6mo. $3-75 a"d $4-50- PROSE MASTERPIECES FROM MODERN ESSAY- ISTS. Compiled by Gbo. H. Putnam. Three vols., i6mo, I3.75 and $4.50. HUMOROUS MASTERPIECES FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE. Edited by Edward T. Mason. 1 hree vols, i6mo, $3.75 and $4 50. BRITISH LETTERS. Edited by Edward T. Mason. Three vols., i6mo, $3.75 and $4.50. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, Nkw York and London. Humorous Masterpieces FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE EDITED BY EDWARD T. MASON NEW YORK &. LONDON G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Silje ^nitlurbotlur J^rcss 1S95 COrVRlGMT BV G. p. PUTNAM'S SONS 1886 TTbc ■fcitlcfecrboclicr f>rc99, lAcw )jorh J*.icttrotyi>f '1, rrintc'l, .nn-l Itound hy (J. 1*. Puliiaiii'k Soil!) LW^L. M2>7l V.I PREFACE. THE chief object of these volumes is to amuse ; but, perhaps, they may also lielp to illustrate some phases of American literature. Humor is certainly one of the strong characteristics of our literature ; and the attempt has here been made to bring to- gether, in an attractive form and within a moderate compass, some worthy examples of humorous writing, from the time of Irving to the present day. It need scarcely be said that no claim is made to an exhaustive treatment of the subject. The title for the series was chosen, with some hesitation, as being fairly descriptive, in a gen- eral sense. Its strict accuracy may doubtless, in certain instances, be open to question ; for, while it is believed that nothing unworthy of preservation has been admitted, it was neces- sary, in order to make the work fitly representa- tive, to include some sketches which are hardly entitled to take rank as masterpieces. In jus- iii irN'vV IV PREFACE. tice to himself, the editor must add that the final choice of the particular material selected has not always been decided by his preference, and is not always in entire accord with his judg- ment ; in a few cases it was found necessary to leave the selection to be determined by the wishes of the respective authors or of their publishers. A well-founded, undeniable grievance, the grounds for which can be clearly set forth, is so comfortable a luxury, that there is a strong temptation to dwell upon a few of the special difficulties which have perplexed the compiler of these volumes. But, Cni bono ? If the work- is dull, apologies are quite useless ; if it is not dull, they are uncalled for. Cordial thanks are due to the many living writers whose work is here represented. It is pleasant to be able to say that, in a correspond- ence with more than fifty literary workers, not a letter has been received which was not gracious in spirit and courteous in expression. The editor would express his deep sense of obligation for kindnesses which he had no right to expect. lie would also acknowledge his large indebtedness to Mr. Geo. Haven Putnam, whose skilful aid removed some unexpected PREFACE. V and embarrassing obstacles, and whose wise counsel justly entitles him to be considered a co-editor of this work. The larger part of the material has been taken from copyrighted books, and could not have been used without the consent of the copyright owners and the publishers. This consent was freely given, and is thankfully acknowledged. The publishing firms to whose courtesy the edi- tor is indebted for permission to use selections from works owned or published by them are : Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. ; G. W. Carleton & Co. ; Cassell & Co. ; The Century Co. ; Estes & Lauriat ; Fords, Howard, & Hurlbut ; Harper & Brothers ; Henry Holt & Co. ; Houghton, Mif- flin, & Co. ; Lee&Shepard; Mitchell & Miller ; the editor of Outing ; T. B. Peterson & Broth- ers ; Roberts Brothers ; Charles Scribner's Sons ; and Ticknor & Co. E. T. M. CONTENTS. PAGE Washington Irving 1-24 Wouter Van Twiller I Wilhelmus Kieft . 10 Peter Stuyvesant . . 16 Antony Van Corlear . 18 General Van Poffenburgh 21 Nathaniel Hawthorne , 25-47 Dr. Heidegger's Experiment . • 25 The British Matron . 43 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . 48 A Wraith in the Mist . 48 Edmund Quincy 49-84 Who Paid for the Prima Donna ? . 49 Oliver Wendell Holmes . 85-96 Foreign Correspondence . 85 Music Pounding 89 The Old Man Dreams . . gi Dislikes .... ■ 93 Harriet Beecher Stowe 97-105 Sam Lawson .... • 97 Henry Ward Beecher 106-117 Deacon Marble . 106 The Deacon's Trout . 109 The Dog Noble and the Empty Hole . Ill Apple Pie . "3 Vll VI II CONTENTS. PAGB JosEi'ii G. Baldwin 118-142 Ovi.l Bolus, Esq 118 I'REDEKicK William Suklton .... 143-141J Incidents ill a Retired Life ..... 143 Thomas Bangs TuoRrE '50-155 A " Hoosier" in Search of Justice . . 150 John Godfrey Sa.xe 156-157 The Coquette — A Portrait ..... 156 James Thomas Fields 158-166 The Pettibone Lineage . . . . . • 158 Frederick S. Cozzens 167-178 The Family Horse ...... 167 Henry W, Shaw ("7^/5 i9«//jM^j") . . . 179-183 The Musketeer 179 Laffing 180 James Russell Lowell 184-198 At Sea 184 The Chief Mate 186 The Courtin' ........ 194 Lucretia p. Hale 199-212 Modern Improvements at the Peterkins . . . 199 Edward Everett Hale 213-235 My DouMc and How He Undid Me . . . 213 Richard Malcolm Johnston .... 236-252 The Various Languages of Billy Moon . . 236 Charles Godfrey Leland .... 253-271 A Musical Duel 253 Schnitzerl's Philosopcde 262 Selection from Breitman's Going to Church . 264 Geor(;k William Cirtis 272-287 From the Summer Diary of Minerva Tattle 272 WASHINGTON IRVING. (born, 1783 — DIED, 1859.) WOUTER VAN TWILLER. IT was in the year of our Lord 1629 that Myn- heer Wouter Van Twiller was appointed governor of the province of Nieuw Nederlandts, under the commission and control of their High Mightinesses the Lords States General of the United Netherlands, and the privileged West India Company. This renowned old gentleman arrived at New Amsterdam in the merry month of June, the sweetest month in all the year; when dan Apollo seems to dance up the transparent firmament, — when the robin, the thrush, and a thousand other wanton songsters, make the woods to resound with amorous ditties, and the luxurious little boblincon revels among- the clover-blossoms of the meadows, — all which happy coincidence persuaded the old dames of New Amsterdam, who were skilled in the art WASHINGTON IRVING. of foretelling events, that this was to be a happy and prosperous administration. The renowned Woutcr (or Walter) Van Twil- ler was descended from a long line of Dutch burgomasters, who had successively dozed away their lives, and grown fat upon the bench of magistracy in Rotterdam ; and who had com- ported themselves with such singular wisdom and propriet}', that they were never either heard or talked of — which, next to being uni- versally applauded, should be the object of ambition of all magistrates and rulers. There are two opposite ways by which some men make a figure in the world ; one, by talking faster than they think, and the other, by hold- ing their tongues and not thinking at all. By the first, many a smattcrer acquires the repu- tation of a man of quick parts; by the other, many a dundcrpate, like the owl, the stupidest of birds, comes to be considered the very tj'pe of wisdom. This, by the wa)-, is a casual re- mark, which I would not, for the universe, have it thought I apply to Governor Van Twil- ler. It is true he was a man shut up within himself, like an oyster, and rarely spoke, ex- cept in monosyllables ; but then it was allowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible WOUTER VAN TWILLER. was his gravity that he was never known to laugh or even to smile through the whole course of a long and prosperous life. Nay, if a joke were uttered in his presence, that set light-minded hearers in a roar, it was observed to throw him into a state of perplexity. Some- times he would deign to inquire into the mat- ter, and when, after much explanation, the joke was made as plain as a pike-staff, he would continue to smoke his pipe in silence, and at length, knocking out the ashes, would exclaim, " Well, I see nothing in all that to laugh about." With all his reflective habits, he never made up his mind on a subject. His adherents ac- counted for this by the astonishing magnitude of his ideas. He conceived every subject on so grand a scale that he had not room in his head to turn it over and examine both sides of it. Certain it is, that, if any matter were pro- pounded to him on which ordinary mortals would rashly determine at first glance, he would put on a vague, mysterious look, shake his ca- pacious head, smoke some time in profound silence, and at length observe, that " he had his doubts about the matter"; which gained him the reputation of a man slow of belief and ir.-l SHIA'G TON IK VING. not easily imposed upon. What is more, it gained him a lasting name ; for to this habit of the mind has been attributed his surname of Tvviller ; which is said to be a corruption of the original Twijfler, or, in plain English, Doubter. The person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed and proportioned as though it had been moulded by the hands of some cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of majesty and lordly grandeur. He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches in cir- cumference. His head was a perfect sphere, and of such stupendous dimensions, that Dame Nature, with all her sex's ingenuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it ; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone, just between the shoulders. His body was oblong, and particularly capacious at bottom ; which was wisely ordered by Provi- dence, seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits, and very averse to the idle labor of walking. His legs were short, but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain ; so that when erect he had not a little the ap- pearance of a beer barrel on skids. His face, WOUTER VAN TWILLER. 5 that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse, unfurrowed by those lines and angles which disfigure the human counte- nance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament, and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of every thing that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a spitzenberg apple. His habits were as regular as his person. He daily took his four stated meals, appropriating exactly an hour to each ; he smoked and doubted eight hours, and he slept the remain- ing twelve of the four-and-twenty. Such was the renowned Wouter Van Twiller, — a true philosopher, for his mind was either elevated above, or tranquilly settled below, the cares and perplexities of this world. He had lived in it for years, without feeling the least curiosity to know whether the sun revolved round it, or it round the sun ; and he had watched, for at least half a century, the smoke curling from his pipe to the ceiling, without once troubling his head with any of those numerous theories by which a philosopher would have perplexed his brain, WASHINGTON IRVING. in accounting for its rising above the surround- ing atmosphere. In his council he presided with great state and solemnity. He sat in a huge chair of solid oak, hewn in the celebrated forest of the Hague, fabricated by an experienced timmerman of Amsterdam, and curiously carved about the arms and feet, into exact imitations of gigantic eagle's claws. Instead of a sceptre, he swayed a long Turkish pipe, wrought with jasmin and amber, which had been presented to a stadt- holder of Holland at the conclusion of a treaty with one of the petty Barbary powers. In this stately chair would he sit, and this magnificent pipe would he smoke, shaking his right knee with a constant motion, and fixing his eye for hours together upon a little print of Amster- dam, which hung in a black frame against the opposite wall of the council-chamber. Nay, it has even been said, that when any deliberation of extraordinary length and intricacy was on the carpet, the renowned Wouter would shut his eyes for full two hours at a time, that he might not be disturbed by external objects; and at such times the internal commotion of his mind was evinced by certain regular gut- tural sounds, which his admirers declared were WOUTER VAN TWILLER. merely the noise of conflict, made by his con- tending doubts and opinions. It is with infinite difficulty I have been ena- bled to collect these biographical anecdotes of the great man under consideration. The facts respecting him were so scattered and vague, and divers of them so questionable in point of authenticity, that I have had to give up the search after many, and decline the admission of still more, which would have tended to heighten the coloring of his portrait. I have been the more anxious to delineate fully the person and habits of Wouter Van Twiller, from the consideration that he was not only the first, but also the best governor that ever presided over this ancient and respect- able province ; and so tranquil and benevolent was his reign, that I do not find throughout the whole of it a single instance of any offender being brought to punishment, — a most indubi- table sign of a merciful governor, and a case unparalleled, excepting in the reign of the illus- trious King Log, from whom, it is hinted, the renowned Van Twiller was a lineal descendant. The very outset of the career of this excellent magistrate was distinguished by an example of legal acumen, that gave flattering presage of a 8 WASHINGTON IRVING. wise and equitable administration. The morn- ing after he had been installed in office, and at the moment that he was making his breakfast from a prodigious earthen dish, filled with milk and Indian pudding, he was interrupted by the appearance of Wandle Schoonhoven, a very im- portant old burgher of New Amsterdam, who complained bitterly of one Barcnt Bleecker, inasmuch as he refused to come to a settlement of accounts, seeing that there was a heavy bal- ance in favor of the said Wandle. Governor Van Twiller, as I have already observed, was a man of few words; he was likewise a mortal enemy to multiplying writings — or being dis- turbed at his breakfast. Having listened at- tentively to the statement of Wandle Schoon- hoven, giving an occasional grunt, as he shov- elled a spoonful of Indian pudding into his mouth, — either as a sign that he relished the dish, or comprehended the story, — he called unto him his constable, and pulling out of his breeches pocket a huge jack-knife, dispatched it after the defendant as a summons, accompanied by his tobacco-box as a warrant. This summary process was as effectual in those simple days as was the seal-ring of the great Haroun Alraschid among the true believ- W OUTER VAN TWILLER. ers. The two parties being confronted before him, each produced a book of accounts, written in a language and character that would have puzzled any but a High-Dutch commentator, or a learned decipherer of Egyptian obelisks. The sage Wouter took them one after the other, and having poised them in his hands, and at- tentively counted over the number of leaves, fell straightway into a very great doubt, and smoked for half an hour without saying a word ; at length, laying his finger beside his nose, and shutting his eyes for a moment, with the air of a man who has just caught a subtle idea by the tail, he slowly took his pipe from his mouth, puffed forth a column of tobacco-smoke, and with marvellous gravity and solemnity pro- nounced, that, having carefully counted over the leaves and weighed the books, it was found, that one was just as thick and as heavy as the other: therefore, it was the final opinion of the court that the accounts were equally balanced : therefore, Wandle should give Barent a receipt, and Barent should give Wandle a receipt, and the constable should pay the costs. This decision, being straightway made known, diffused general joy throughout New Amster- dam, for the people immediately perceived that lO WASHINGTON IRVING. they had a very wise and equitable magistrate to rule over them. But its happiest effect was, that not another lawsuit took place throughout the whole of his administration ; and the office of constable fell into such decay, that there was not one of those losel scouts known in the province for many years. I am the more par- ticular in dwelling on this transaction, not only because I deem it one of the most sage and righteous judgments on record, and well worthy the attention of modern magistrates, but be- cause it was a miraculous event in the history of the renowned Wouter — being the only time he was ever known to come to a decision in the whole course of his life. WILHELMUS KIEFT. As some sleek ox, sunk in the rich repose of a clover field, dozing and chewing the cud, will bear repeated blows before it raises itself, so the province of Nieuw Nederlandts, having waxed fat under the drowsy reign of the Doubter, needed cuffs and kicks to rouse it into action. The reader will now witness the manner in which a peaceful community advances toward a state of war ; which is apt to be like the ap- proach of a horse to a drum, with much pranc- WILHELMUS KIEFT. II ing and little progress, and too often with the wrong end foremost. Wilhelmus Kieft, who in 1634 ascended the gubernatorial chair, (to borrow a favorite though clumsy appellation of modern phraseologists,) was of a lofty descent, his father being inspector of wind-mills in the ancient town of Saardam ; and our hero, we are told, when a boy, made very curious investigations into the nature and operation of these machines, which was one reason why he afterwards came to be so ingen- ious a governor. His name, according to the most authentic etymologists, was a corruption of Kyver, that is to say, a wrangler or scolder, and expressed the characteristic of his family, which, for nearly two centuries, have kept the windy town of Saardam in hot water, and pro- duced more tartars and brimstones than any ten families in the place ; and so truly did he inherit this family peculiarity, that he had not been a year in the government of the prov- ince, before he was universally denominated William the Testy. His appearance answered to his name. He was a brisk, wiry, waspish little old gentleman ; such a one as may now and then be seen stumping about our city in a broad-skirted coat with huge buttons, a cocked 12 WASHINGTON IRVING. hat Stuck on the back of his head, and a cane as high as his chin. His face was broad, but his features were sharp ; his cheeks were scorched into a dusky red by two fiery little gray eyes, his nose turned up, and the corners of his mouth turned down, pretty much like the muzzle of an irritable pug-dog. I have heard it observed by a profound adept in human physiolog)', that if a woman waxes fat with the progress of years, her tenure of life is somewhat precarious, but if haply she withers as she grows old, she lives forever. Such prom- ised to be the case with William the Testy, who grew tough in proportion as he dried. He had withered, in fact, not through the process of years, but through the tropical fervor of his soul, which burnt like a vehement rush-light in his bosom, inciting him to incessant broils and bickerings. Ancient tradition speaks much of his learning, and of the gallant inroads he had made into the dead languages, in which he had made captive a host of Greek nouns and Latin verbs, and brought off rich booty in ancient saws and apothegms, which he was wont to parade in his public harangues, as a triumphant general of yore his spolia opima. Of meta- physics he knew enough to confound all hearers WILHELMUS KIEFT. 1 3 and himself into the bargain. In logic, he knew the whole family of syllogisms and dilem- mas, and was so proud of his skill that he never suffered even a self-evident fact to pass un- argued. It was observed, however, that he seldom got into an argument without getting into a perplexity, and then into a passion with his adversary for not being convinced gratis. He had, moreover, skirmished smartly on the frontiers of several of the sciences, was fond of experimental philosophy, and prided himself upon inventions of all kinds. His abode, which he had fixed at a Bowerie or country-seat at a short distance from the city, just at what is now called Dutch Street, soon abounded with proofs of his ingenuity: patent smoke-jacks that re- quired a horse to work them ; Dutch ovens that roasted meat without fire ; carts that went be- fore the horses ; weather-cocks that turned against the wind ; and other wrong-headed contrivances that astonished and confounded all beholders. The house, too, was beset with paralytic cats and dogs, the subjects of his experimental philosophy; and the yelling and yelping of the latter unhappy victims of science, while aiding in the pursuit of knowledge, soon gained for the place the name of " Dog's Misery," 14 WASHINGTON IRVING. by which it continues to be known even at the present day. It is in knowledge as in swimming: he who flounders and splashes on the surface makes more noise, and attracts more attention, than the pearl-diver who quietly dives in quest of treasures to the bottom. The vast acquire- ments of the new governor were the theme of marvel among the simple burghers of New Amsterdam ; he figured about the place as learned a man as a Bonze at Pekin, who had mastered one half of the Chinese alphabet, and was unanimously pronounced a " univer- sal genius! "... Thus end the authenticated chronicles of the reign of William the Testy; for henceforth, in the troubles, perplexities, and confusion of the times, he seems to have been totally over- looked, and to have slipped forever through the fingers of scrupulous history. . . . It is true, that certain of the early provincial poets, of whom there were great numbers in the Nieuw Nedcrlandts, taking advantage of his mysterious exit, have fabled, that, like Romu- lus, he was translated to the skies, and forms a very fiery little star, somewhere on the left claw of the Crab ; while others, equally fanciful, WILHELMUS KIEFT. I 5 declare that he had experienced a fate similar to that of the good king Arthur, who, we are assured by ancient bards, was carried away to the delicious abodes of fairy-land, where he still exists in pristine worth and vigor, and will one day or another return to restore the gal- lantry, the honor, and the immaculate probity, which prevailed in the glorious days of the Round Table. All these, however, are but pleasing fan- tasies, the cobweb visions of those dreaming varlets, the poets, to which I would not have my judicious readers attach any credibility. Neither am I disposed to credit an ancient and rather apocryphal historian, who asserts that the ingenious Wilhelmus was annihilated by the blowing down of one of his wind-mills; nor a writer of latter times, who af^rms that he fell a victim to an experiment in natural his- tory, having the misfortune to break his neck from a garret-window of the stadthouse in at- tempting to catch swallows by sprinkling salt upon their tails. Still less do I put my faith in the tradition that he perished at sea in con- veying home to Holland a treasure of golden ore, discovered somewhere among the haunted regions of the Catskill mountains. 1 6 WASHINGTON IRVING. The most probable account declares, that, what with the constant troubles on his fron- tiers, the incessant schemings and projects going on in his own pericranium, the memori- als, petitions, remonstrances, and sage pieces of advice of respectable meetings of the sov- ereign people, and the refractory disposition of his councillors, who were sure to differ from him on every point, and uniformly to be in the wrong, his mind was kept in a furnace-heat, until he became as completely burnt out as a Dutch family-pipe which has passed through three generations of hard smokers. In this manner did he undergo a kind of animal com- bustion, consuming away like a farthing rush- light ; so that when grim death finally snuffed him out, there was scarce left enough of him to bury. PETER STUYVESANT. Peter Stuyvesant was the last, and, like the renowned Wouter Van Twiller, the best of our ancient Dutch governors. Wouter having sur- passed all who preceded him, and Peter, or Piet, as he was sociably called by the old Dutch burghers, who were ever prone to famil- iarize names, having never been equalled by PETER STUYVESANT. 17 any successor. He was in fact the very man fitted by nature to retrieve the desperate for- tunes of her beloved province, had not the fates, those most potent and unrelenting of all ancient spinsters destined them to inextricable confusion. To say merely that he was a hero, would be doing him great injustice ; he was in truth a combination of heroes ; for he was of a sturdy raw-boned make, like Ajax Telamon, with a pair of round shoulders that Hercules would have given his hide for (meaning his lion's hide) when he undertook to ease old Atlas of his load. He was, moreover, as Plutarch de- scribes Coriolanus, not only terrible for the force of his arm, but likewise of his voice, which sounded as though it came out of a bar- rel ; and, like the self-same warrior, he pos- sessed a sovereign contempt for the sovereign people, and an iron aspect, which was enough of itself to make the very bowels of his adver- saries quake with terror and dismay. All this martial excellency of appearance was inex- pressibly heightened by an accidental advan- tage, with which I am surprised that neither Homer nor Virgil have graced any of their heroes. This was nothing less than a wooden I 8 WASHINGTON IRVING. leg, which was the only prize he had gained in bravely fighting the battles of his country, but of which he was so proud, that he was often heard to declare he valued it more than all his other limbs put together; indeed so highly did he esteem it that he had it gallantly enchased and relieved with silver devices, which caused it to be related in divers histories and legends that he wore a silver leg. ANTONY VAN CORLEAR. The very first movements of the great Peter, on taking the reins of government, displayed his magnanimity, though they occasioned not a little marvel and uneasiness among the people of the Manhattoes. Finding himself constantly interrupted by the opposition, and annoyed by the advice of his privy council, the members of which had acquired the unreasonable habit of thinking and speaking for themselves during the preceding reign, he determined at once to put a stop to such grievous abominations. Scarcely, therefore, had he entered upon his authority, than he turned out of office all the meddlesome spirits of the factious cabinet of William the Testy ; in place of whom he chose unto himself counsellors from those fat, somnif- ANTONY VAN CORLEAR. I9 erous, respectable burghers who had flourished and slumbered under the easy reign of Walter the Doubter. All these he caused to be fur- nished with abundance of fair long pipes, and to be regaled with frequent corporation dinners, admonishing them to smoke, and eat, and sleep for the good of the nation, while he took the burden of government upon his own shoulders, — an arrangement to which they all gave hearty acquiescence. Nor did he stop here, but made a hideous rout among the inventions and expedients of his learned predecessor, — rooting up his patent gal- lows, where caitiff vagabonds were suspended by the waistband, — demolishing his flag-staffs and wind-mills, which, like mighty giants, guarded the ramparts of New Amsterdam, — pitching to the duyvel whole batteries of quaker guns, — and, in a word, turning topsy-turvy the whole philosophic, economic, and wind-mill system of the immortal sage of Saardam, The honest folk of New Amsterdam began to quake now for the fate of their matchless cham- pion, Antony the Trumpeter, who had acquired prodigious favor in the eyes of the women, by means of his whiskers and his trumpet. Him did Peter the Headstrong cause to be brought 20 WASHINGTON IRVING. into his presence, and eying him for a moment from head to foot, with a countenance that would have appalled any thing else than a sounder of brass, — " Pr'ythee, who and what art thou ? " said he. "Sire," replied the other, in no wise dismayed, " for my name, it is An- tony Van Corlear ; for my parentage, I am the son of my mother; for my profession, I am champion and garrison of this great city of New Amsterdam." " I doubt me much," said Peter Stuyvesant, " that thou art some scurvy cos- tard-monger knave. How didst thou acquire this paramount honor and dignity? " " Marry, sir," replied the other, " like many a great man before me, ^\xx\^^\y by sounding my own trujnpct." "Ay, is it so?" quoth the governor; "why, then let us have a relish of thy art." Where- upon the good Antony put his instrument to his lips, and sounded a charge with such a tre- mendous outset, such a delectable quaver, and such a triumphant cadence, that it was enough to make one's heart leap out of one's mouth only to be within a mile of it. Like as a war- worn charger, grazing in peaceful plains, starts at a strain of martial music, pricks up his ears, and snorts, and paws, and kindles at the noise, so did the heroic Peter joy to hear the clangor GENERAL VAN POFFEN BURGH. 21 of the trumpet ; for of him might truly be said, what was recorded of the renowned St. George of England, " there was nothing in all the world that more rejoiced his heart than to hear the pleasant sound of war, and see the soldiers brandish forth their steeled weapons." Casting his eye more kindly, therefore, upon the sturdy Van Corlear, and finding him to be a jovial varlet, shrewd in his discourse, yet of great dis- cretion and immeasurable wind, he straightway conceived a vast kindness for him, and dis- charging him from the troublesome duty of garrisoning, defending, and alarming the city, ever after retained him about his person, as his chief favorite, confidential envoy, and trusty squire. Instead of disturbing the city with dis- astrous notes, he was instructed to play so as to delight the governor while at his repasts, as did the minstrels of yore in the days of the glorious chivalry, — and on all public occasions to rejoice the ears of the people with warlike melody, — thereby keeping alive a noble and martial spirit. GENERAL VAN POFFENBURGH. It is tropically observed by honest old Soc- rates, that heaven infuses into some men at their birth a portion of intellectual gold, into 22 WASHINGTON IRVING. Others of intellectual silver, while others are in- tellectually furnished with iron and brass. Of the last class was General Van Poffenburgh ; and it would seem as if dame Nature, who will sometimes be partial, had given him brass enough for a dozen ordinary braziers. All this he had contrived to pass off upon William the Testy for genuine gold ; and the little governor would sit for hours and listen to his gunpowder stories of exploits, which left those of Tirante the White, Don Belianis of Greece, or St. George and the Dragon quite in the background. Hav- ing been promoted by William Kieft to the command of his whole disposable forces, he gave importance to his station by the grandilo- quence of his bulletins, always styling himself Commander-in-chief of the Armies of the New Netherlands, though in sober truth, these ar- mies were nothing more than a handful of hen- stealing, bottle-bruising ragamuffins. In person he was not very tall, but exceed- ingly round ; neither did his bulk proceed from his being fat, but wind)-, being blown up by a prodigious conviction of his own importance, until he resembled one of those bags of wind given by ^Eolus, in an incredible fit of gener- osity, to that vagabond warrior Ulysses. His GENERAL VAN POFFENbURGH. 2% windy endowments had long excited the admi- ration of Antony Van Corlear, who is said to have hinted more than once to WilHam the Testy, that in making Van Poffenburgh a gen- eral he had spoiled an admirable trumpeter. As it is the practice in ancient story to give the reader a description of the arms and equip- ments of every noted warrior, I will bestow a word upon the dress of this redoubtable com- mander. It comported with his character, being so crossed and slashed, and embroidered with lace and tinsel, that he seemed to have as much brass without as nature had stored away within. He was swathed, too, in a crimson sash, of the size and texture of a fishing-net, — doubtle--s to keep his swelling heart from bursting through his ribs. His face glowed with furnace-heat from between a huge pair of well-powdered whiskers, and his valorous soul seemed ready to bounce out of a pair of large, glassy, blinking eyes, projecting like those of a lobster. I swear to thee, worthy reader, if history and tradition belie not this warrior, I would give all the money in my pocket to have seen him accoutred cap-a-pie, — booted to the middle, sashed to the chin, collared to the ears, whisk- ered to the teeth, crowned with an overshadow- 24 WASHINGTON IRVING. ing cocked hat, and girded with a leathern belt ten inches broad, from which trailed a falchion, of a length that I dare not mention. Thus equipped, he strutted about, as bitter-looking a man of war as the far-famed More, of More- hall, when he sallied forth to slay the dragon of Wantley. For what says the ballad ? " Had you but seen him in this dress, How fierce he looked and how big, You would have thought him for to be Some Egyptian porcupig. He frighted all — cats, dogs, and all, Each cow, each horse, and each hog ; For fear they did flee, for they took him to be Some strange outlandish hedgehog." — Knickerbocker s History of New York. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. (born, 1804 — DIED, 1864.) DR. HEIDEGGER S EXPERIMENT. THAT very singular man, old Dr. Heideg- ger, once invited four venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three white- bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, and a withered gentlewoman, whose name was the Widow Wy- cherly. They were all melancholy old creatures, who had been unfortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was, that they were not long ago in their graves. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor of his age, had been a prosperous mer- chant, but had lost his all by a frantic specula- tion, and was now little better than a mendicant. Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best years, and his health and substance, in the pursuit of sinful pleasures, which had given birth to a brood of pains, such as the gout, and divers other tor- ments of soul and body. Mr. Gascoigne was a 25 26 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. ruined politician, a man of evil fame, or at least had been so, till time had buried him from the knowledge of the present generation, and made him obscure instead of infamous. As for the Widow Wycherly, tradition tells us that she was a great beauty in her day; but, for a long while past she had lived in deep seclusion, on account of certain scandalous stories, which had prejudiced the gentry of the town against her. It is a cir- cumstance worth mentioning, that each of these three old gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrcw, and Mr. Gascoigne, were early lovers of the Widow Wycherly, and had once been on the point of cutting each other's throats for her sake. And, before proceeding further, I will merely hint that Dr. Heidegger, and all his four guests were sometimes thought to be a little beside themselves ; as is not unfrequently the case with old people, when worried either by present troubles or woful recollections. " My dear old friends," said Dr. Heidegger, motioning them to be seated, " I am desirous of your assistance in one of those little experi- ments with which I amuse myself here in my study." If all stories were true, Dr. Heidegger's study must have been a ver}' curious place. It was a dim. DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT. 2/ old-fashioned chamber, festooned with cobwebs, and besprinkled with antique dust. Around the walls stood several open bookcases, the lower shelves of which were filled with rows of gigan- tic folios, and black-letter quartos, and the upper with little parchment-covered duodeci- mos. Over the central bookcase was a bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which, according to some authorities. Dr. Heidegger was accus- tomed to hold consultations, in all difficult cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of the room stood a tall and narrow oaken closet, with its door ajar, within which doubt- fully appeared a skeleton. Between two of the bookcases hung a looking-glass presenting its high and dusty plate within a tarnished gilt frame. Among many wonderful stories related of this mirror, it was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor's deceased patients dwelt within its verge, and would stare him in the face when- ever he looked thitherward. The opposite side of the chamber was ornamented with the full- length portrait of a young lady, arrayed in the faded magnificence of silk, satin, and brocade, and with a visage as faded as her dress. Above half a century ago Dr. Heidegger had been on the point of marriage with this young lady; 28 NA THANIEL HA IVTHORNE. but, being affected with some slight disorder, she had swallowed one of her lover's prescrip- tions, and died on the bridal evening. The greatest curiosity of the study remains to be mentioned ; it was a ponderous folio volume, bound in black leather, with massive silver clasps. There were no letters on the back, and nobody could tell the title of the book. But it was well known to be a book of magic ; and once, when a chambermaid had lifted it, merely to brush away the dust, the skeleton had rattled in its closet, the picture of the young lady had stepped one foot upon the floor, and several ghastly faces had peeped forth from the mirror; while the brazen head of Hippocrates frowned, and said — " Forbear! " Such was Dr. Heidegger's study. On the summer afternoon of our tale, a small round table, as black as ebony, stood in the centre of the room, sustaining a cut-glass vase, of beauti- ful form and elaborate workmanship. The sunshine came through the window, between the heavy festoons of two faded damask cur- tains, and fell directly across this vase ; so that a mild splendor was reflected from it on the ashen visages of the five old people who sat around. Four champagne glasses were also on the table. DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT. 29 " My dear old friends," repeated Dr. Heideg- ger, " may I reckon on your aid in performing an exceedingly curious experiment ? " Now Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman, whose eccentricity had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories. Some of these fables, to my shame be it spoken, might possibly be traced back to mine own veracious self ; and if any passages of the present tale should startle the reader's faith, I must be con- tent to bear the stigma of a fiction monger. When the doctor's four guests heard him talk of his proposed experiment, they antici- pated nothing more wonderful than the murder of a mouse in an air-pump, or the examination of a cobweb by the microscope, or some simi- lar nonsense, with which he was constantly in the habit of pestering his intimates. But with- out waiting for a reply. Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber, and returned with the same ponderous folio, bound in black leather, which common report affirmed to be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the vol- ume, and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one brownish hue, and the ancient 30 NATrlANIEL HAWTHORNE. flower seemed ready to crumble to dust in the doctor's hands. "This rose," said Dr. Heidegger, with a sigh, " this same withered and crumbhng flower, blossomed five and fifty years ago. It was given me by Sylvia Ward, whose portrait hangs yonder; and I meant to wear it in my bosom at our wedding. Five and fifty years it has been treasured between the leaves of this old volume. Now would you deem it possible that this rose of half a century could ever bloom again ? " " Nonsense ! " said the Widow Wycherly, with a peevish toss of her head. "You might as well ask whether an old woman's wrinkled face could ever bloom again." " See ! " answered Dr. Heidegger. He uncovered the vase, and threw the faded rose into the water which it contained. At first it lay lightly on the surface of the fluid, appearing to imbibe none of its moisture. Soon, however, a singular change began to be visible. The crushed and dried petals stirred, and assumed a deepening tinge of crimson, as if the flower were reviving from a death-like slumber; the slender stalks and twigs of foliage became green ; and there was the rose of half a DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT. 3 1 century, looking as fresh as when Sylvia Ward had first given it to her lover. It was scarcely full blown ; for some of its delicate red leaves curled modestly around its moist bosom, within which two or three dewdrops were sparkling. " That is certainly a very pretty deception," said the doctor's friends; carelessly, however, for they had witnessed greater miracles at a conjuror's show ; " pray, how was it effec- ted ? " " Did you ever hear of the * Fountain of Youth,'" asked Dr. Heidegger, "which Ponce De Leon, the Spanish adventurer, went in search of two or three centuries ago ? " " But did Ponce De Leon ever find it? " said the Widow Wycherly. " No," answered Dr. Heidegger, " for he never sought it in the right place. The famous Fountain of Youth, if I am rightly informed, is situated in the southern part of the Floridian peninsula, not far from Lake Macaco. Its source is overshadowed by several gigantic magnolias, which, though numberless centuries old, have been kept as fresh as violets, by the virtues of this wonderful water. An acquaint- ance of mine, knowing my curiosity in such matters, has sent me what you see in the vase." 32 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. " Ahem ! " said Colonel Killigrew, who be- lieved not a word of the doctor's story ; " and what may be the effect of this fluid on the human frame? " "You shall judge for yourself, my dear Colo- nel," replied Dr. Heidegger; "and all of you, my respected friends, are welcome to so much of this admirable fluid as may restore to you the bloom of youth. For my own part, having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no hurry to grow young again. With your per- mission, therefore, I will merely watch the progress of the experiment." While he spoke, Dr. Heidegger had been fill- ing the four champagne glasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was apparently impregnated with an effervescent gas, for little bubbles were continually ascending from the depths of the glasses, and bursting in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor diffused a pleasant perfume, the old people doubted not that it possessed cordial and comfortable prop- erties; and, though utter sceptics as to its re- juvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But Dr. Heidegger be- sought them to stay a moment. " Before you drink, my respectable old DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT. 33 friends," said he, " it would be well that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you, you should draw up a few general rules for your guidance, in passing a second time through the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would be, if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age ! " The doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer, except by a feeble and tremulous laugh ; so very ridiculous was the idea, that, knowing how closely repentance treads behind the steps of error, they should ever go astray again. " Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing ; " I rejoice that I have so well selected the subjects of my experiment." With palsied hands, they raised the glasses to their lips. The liquor, if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed to it, could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more wofully. They looked as if they had never known what youth or pleasure was, but had been the offspring of Nature's dotage, and always the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures, who now sat stoop- ing around the doctor's table, without life 34 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. enough in their souls or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of growing young again. They drank off the water, and replaced their glasses on the table. Assuredly there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of the party, not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of generous wine together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine brightening over all their visages at once. There was a healthful suffusion on their cheeks, instead of the ashen hue that had made them look so corpse-like. They gazed at one another, and fancied that some magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their brows. The Widow Wychcrly adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a woman again. " Give us more of this wondrous water ! " cried they, eagerly. " We are younger — but we are still too old. Quick — give us more ! " " Patience, patience ! " quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat watching the experiment, with philo- sophic coolness. "You have been a long time growing old. Surely, you might be content to grow young in half an hour ! But the water is at your service." DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT. 35 Again he filled their glasses with the liquor of youth, enough of which still remained in the vase to turn half the old people in the city to the age of their own grandchildren. While the bubbles were yet sparkling on the brim, the doctor's four guests snatched their glasses from the table, and swallowed the contents at a sinele o gulp. Was it delusion ? even while the draught was passing down their throats, it seemed to have wrought a change on their whole systems. Their eyes grew clear and bright ; a dark shade deepened among their silvery locks ; they sat around the table, three gentlemen of middle age, and a woman hardly beyond her buxom prime. " My dear widow, you are charming ! " cried Colonel Killigrew, whose eyes had been fixed upon her face, while the shadows of age were flitting from it like darkness from the crimson daybreak. The fair widow knew, of old, that Colonel Killigrew's compliments were not always meas- ured by sober truth ; so she started up and ran to the mirror, still dreading that the ugly visage of an old woman would meet her gaze. Mean- while, the three gentlemen behaved in such manner, as proved that the water of the Foun- 36 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. tain of Youth possessed some intoxicating qualities ; unless, indeed, their exhilaration of spirits were merely a lightsome dizziness, caused by the sudden removal of the weight of years. Mr, Gascoigne's mind seemed to run on political topics, but whether relating to the past, present, or future, could not easily be de- termined, since the same ideas and phrases have been in vogue these fifty years. Now he rattled forth full-throated sentences about patriotism, national glory, and the people's right ; now he muttered some perilous stuff or other, in a sly and doubtful whisper, so cautiously that even his own conscience could scarcely catch the secret ; and now, again, he spoke in measured accents, and a deeply deferential tone, as if a royal car were listening to his well-turned periods. Colonel Killigrcw all this time had been trolling forth a joll}- bottle song, and ringing his glass in symphony with the chorus, while his eyes wandered toward the buxom figure of the Widow Wycherly. On the other side of the table, Mr. Medbourne was involved in a calculation of dollars and cents, with which was strangely intermingled a project for sup- plying the East Indies with ice, by harnessing a team of whales to the polar icebergs. DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT. 37 As for the Widow Wycherly, she stood be- fore the mirror courtesying and simpering to her own image, and greeting it as the friend whom she loved better than all the world be- side. She thrust her face close to the glass, to see whether some long-remembered wrinkle or crow's foot had indeed vanished. She ex- amined whether the snow had so entirely melted from her hair, that the venerable cap could be safely thrown aside. At last, turning briskly away, she came with a sort of dancing step to the table. " My dear old doctor," cried she, " pray favor me with another glass ! " " Certainly, my dear madam, certainly ! " re- plied the complaisant doctor ; " see ! I have already filled the glasses." There, in fact, stood the four glasses, brimful of this wonderful water, the delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from the surface, re- sembled the tremulous glitter of diamonds. It was now so nearly sunset, that the chamber iiad grown duskier than ever ; but a mild and moonlight splendor gleamed from within the vase, and rested alike on the four guests, and on the doctor's venerable figure. He sat in a high-backed, elaborately carved oaken arm- 38 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. chair, with a gray dignity of aspect that might have well befitted that very Father Time whose power had never been disputed, save by this fortunate company. Even while quaffing the third draught of the Fountain of Youth they were almost awed by the expression of his mysterious visage. But, the next moment, the exhilarating gush of young life shot through their veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age, with its miserable train of cares, and sorrows, and diseases, was remembered only as the trouble of a dream, from which they had joy- ously awoke. The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost, and without which the world's suc- cessive scenes had been but a gallery of faded pictures, again threw its enchantment over all their prospects. They felt like new-created beings, in a new-created universe. "We are young! We are young!" they cried exultingly. Youth, hke the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly marked characteristics of middle hfe, and mutually assimilated them all. They were a group of merry youngsters, almost mad- dened with the exuberant frolicsomeness of their years. The most singular effect of their DR. HEIDEGGER 'S EXPERIMENT. 39 gayety was an impulse to mock the infirmity and decrepitude of which they had so lately been the victims. They laughed loudly at their old-fashioned attire, the wide-skirted coats and flapped waistcoats of the young men, and the ancient cap and gown of the blooming girl. One limped across the floor like a gouty grandfather ; one set a pair of spectacles astride of his nose, and pretended to pore over the black-letter pages of the book of magic ; a third seated himself in an arm-chair, and strove to imitate the venerable dignity of Dr. Heidegger. Then all shouted mirthfully and leaped about the room. The Widow Wycherly — if so fresh a damsel could be called a widow — tripped up to the doctor's chair, with a mischievous merriment in her rosy face. " Doctor, you dear old soul," cried she, " get up and dance with me ! " And then the four young people laughed louder than ever, to think what a queer figure the poor old doctor would cut. " Pray excuse me," answered the doctor, quietly. " I am old and rheumatic, and my dancing days were over long ago. But either of these gay young gentlemen will be glad of so pretty a partner." 40 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. " Dance with me, Clara," cried Colonel Killi- grew. " No, no, I will be her partner ! " shouted Mr. Gascoigne. " She promised me her hand fifty years ago ! " exclaimed Mr. Medbourne. They all gathered round her. One caught both her hands in his passionate grasp — another threw his arms about her waist — the third buried his hand among the glossy curls that clustered beneath the widow's cap. Blushing, panting, struggling,chiding, laughing, her warm breath fan- ning each of their faces by turns, she strove to dis- engage herself, yet still remained in their triple embrace. Never was there a livelier picture of youthful rivalship, with bewitching beauty for the prize. Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the duskiness of the chamber, and the antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the three old, gra)-,witheredgrandsires, ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of a shrivelled grandam. But they were young: their burning passions proved them so. Inflamed to madness by the coquetry of the girl-widow, who neither granted nor quite withheld her favors, the three rivals began to interchange threatening glances. Still DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT. 4 1 keeping hold of the fair prize, they grappled fiercely at one another's throats. As they struggled to and fro, the table was overturned, and the vase dashed into a thousand fragments. The precious Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream across the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly, which, grown old in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die. The insect fluttered lightly through the chamber, and set- tled on the snowy head of Dr. Heidegger. " Come, come, gentlemen ! — come, Madam Wycherly," exclaimed the doctor, " I really must protest against this riot." They stood still, and shivered ; for it seemed as if gray Time were calling them back from their sunny youth, far down into the chill and darksome vale of years. They looked at old Dr. Heidegger, who sat in his carved arm-chair, holding the rose of half a century, which he had rescued from among the fragments of the shat- tered vase. At the motion of his hand, the four rioters resumed their seats ; the more readily, because their violent exertions had wearied them, youthful though they were. " My poor Sylvia's rose ! " ejaculated Dr. Heidegger, holding it to the light of the sun- set clouds ; " it appears to be fading again." 42 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. And so it was. Even while the party were looking at it, the flower continued to shrivel up, till it became as dry and fragile as when the doctor had first thrown it into the vase. He shook off the few drops of moisture which clung to its petals. " I love it as well thus, as in its dewy fresh- ness," observed he, pressing the withered rose to his withered lips. While he spoke, the but- terfly fluttered down from the doctor's snowy head, and fell upon the floor. His guests shivered again. A strange chilli- ness, whether of the body or spirit they could not tell, was creeping gradually over them all. They gazed at one another, and fancied that each fleeting moment snatched away a charm, and left a deepening furrow where none had been before. Was it an illusion ? Had the changes of a lifetime been crowded into so brief a space, and were they now four aged people, sitting with their old friend. Dr. Heidegger ? " Are we grown old again so soon?" cried they, dolefully. In truth, they had. The Water of Youth possessed merely a virtue more transient than that of wine. The delirium which it created had effervesced away. Yes ! they were old THE BRITISH MATRON. 43 again. With a shuddering impulse, that showed her a woman still, the widow clasped her skinny hands before her face, and wished that the cofifin-lid were over it, since it could be no longer beautiful. " Yes, friends, ye are old again," said Dr. Heidegger, " and lo ! the Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well — I bemoan it not ; for if the fountain gushed at my very door- step, I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it — no, though its delirium were for years instead of moments. Such is the lesson you have taught me ! " But the doctor's four friends had taught no such lesson to themselves. They resolved forthwith to make a pilgrimage to Florida, and quaff at morning, noon, and night, from the Fountain of Youth. — Twice- Told Tales. THE BRITISH MATRON. I have heard a good deal of the tenacity with which English ladies retain their personal beauty to a late period of life ; but (not to sug- gest that an American eye needs use and culti- vation, before it can quite appreciate the charm of English beauty at any age) it strikes me that 44 XATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. an English lady of fifty is apt to become a creature less refined and delicate, so far as her physique goes, than any thing that we Western people class under the name of woman. She has an awful ponderosity of frame, not pulpy, like the looser development of our few fat women, but massive with solid beef and streaky tallow ; so that (though struggling manfully against the idea) you inevitably think of her as made up of steaks and sirloins. When she walks, her advance is elephantine. When she sits down it is on a great round space of her Maker's footstool, where she looks as if nothing could ever move her. She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her personality, to such a degree that you probably credit her with far greater moral and intellectual force than she can fairly claim. Her visage is usually grim and stern, seldom positively forbidding, yet calmly terrible, not merely by its breadth and weight of feature, but because it seems to ex- press so much well-defined self-reliance, such acquaintance with the world, its toils, troubles, and dangers, and such sturdy capacity for trampling down a foe. Without any thing positively salient, or actively offensive, or, in- deed, unjustly formidable to her neighbors, she THE BRITISH MA TRON. 45 has the effect of a seventy-four gun-ship in time of peace ; for, while you assure yourself that there is no real danger, you cannot help think- ing how tremendous would be her onset, if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the effort to inflict any counter-injury. She certainly looks tenfold — nay, a hundred-fold — better able to take care of herself than our slender-framed and haggard womankind ; but I have not found reason to suppose that the English dowager of fifty has actually greater courage, fortitude, and strength of character than our women of similar age, or even a tougher physical endurance than they. Morally, she is strong, I suspect, only in society, and in the common routine of social affairs, and would be found powerless and timid in any exceptional strait that might call for energy outside of the conventionalities amid which she has grown up. You can meet this figure in the street, and live, and even smile at the recollection. But conceive of her in a ball-room, with the bare, brawny arms that she invariably displays there, and all the other corresponding development, such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom, but a spectacle to howl at in such an over-blown cabbage-rose as this. 46 XATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest, slender, violet- nature of a girl, whom an alien mass of earthli- ness has unkindly overgrown ; for an English maiden in her teens, though very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender woman- hood, shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appre- ciable moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an outrageously developed peony as I have attempted to de- scribe. I wonder whether a middle-aged hus- band ought to be considered as legally married to all the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of liis bride, since he led her to the altar, and which make licr so much more than he ever bargained for ! Is it not a sounder view of tlic case, that the matrimonial bond cannot be held to include the three fourths of the wife that had no existence when the cere- mony was performed ? And as a matter of conscience and good morals, ought not an English married pair to insist upon the cele- bration of a Silver Wedding at the end of THE BRITISH MATRON. 47 twenty-five years in order to legalize and mutually appropriate that corporeal growth of which both parties have individually come into possession since they were pronounced one flesh ? — Our Old Home. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. (born. iS07 — DIED, 1882.) A WRAITH IN THE MIST. " Sir, I should build me a fortification, if I came to live here." — BoswEU-'s Johnson. ON the green little isle of Inchkcnncth, Who is it that walks by the shore, So gay with his Highland blue bonnet, So brave with his targe and claymore ? His form is the form of a giant. But his face wears an aspect of pain ; Can this be the Laird of Inchkenneth ? Can this be Sir Allan McLean ? Ah, no! It is only the Rambler, The Idler, who lives in Bolt Court, And who says, were he Laird of Inchkenneth, He would wall himself round with a fort. — Birds of Passage. EDMUND QUINCY. (born, 1808 — DIED, 1877.) WHO PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA? IF any thing could make a man forgive himself for being sixty years old," said the Consul, holding up his wineglass between his eye and the setting sun, — for it was sum- mer-time, — " it would be that he can remem- ber Malibran in her divine sixteenity at the Park Theatre, thirty odd years ago. Egad, sir, one could n't help making great allowances for Don Giovanni, after seeing her in Zerlina. She was beyond imagination piqnante and de- licious." The Consul, as my readers may have partly inferred, was not a Roman Consul, nor yet a French one. He had had the honor of repre- senting this great republic at one of the Hanse towns, I forget which, in President Monroe's time. I don't recollect how long he held the 49 50 EDMUND QUINCY. office ; but it was long enough to make the title stick to him for the rest of his life with the tenacity of a militia colonelcy or village diaconate. The country people round about used to call him " the Counsel^' which, I be- lieve, — for I am not very fresh from my school- books, — was etymologically correct enough, however orthocpically erroneous. He had not limited his European life, however, within the precinct of his Hanseatic consulship, but had dispersed himself very promiscuously over the Continent, and had seen many cities, and the manners of many men and of some women, — singing-women, I mean, — in their public char- acter; for the Consul, correct of life as of ear, never sought to undeify his divinities by pur- suing them from the heaven of the stage to the purgatorial intermediacy of the coulisses, still less to the lower depth of disenchantment into which too many of them sunk in their pri- vate life. " Yes, sir," he went on, " I have seen and heard them all, — Catalani, Pasta, Pezzaroni, Grisi, and all the rest of them, even Sonntag, though not in her very best estate ; but I give you my word there is none that has taken lodgings here," tapping his forehead, " so per- fVJIO PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA ? 5 I manently as the Signorina Garcia, or that I can see and hear so distinctly when I am in the mood of it by myself. Rosina, Desdemojia, Cinderella, and, as I said just now, Zerlina — she is as fresh in them all to my mind's eye and ear, as if the Park Theatre had not given way for a cursed shoe-shop, and I had been hearing her there only last night. Let 's drink her memory," the Consul added, half in mirth and half in melancholy, — a mood to which he was not unused, and which did not ill become him. Now, no intelligent person who knew the excellence of the Consul's wine could refuse to pay this posthumous honor to the harmonious shade of the lost Muse. The Consul was an old-fashioned man in his tastes, to be sure, and held to the old religion of Madeira, which di- vided the faith of our forefathers with the Cambridge Platform, and had never given in to the later heresies which have crept into the communion of good-fellowship from the south of France and the Rhine. " A glass of champagne," he would say, " is all well enough at the end of dinner, just to take the grease out of one's throat, and get the palate ready for the more serious vintages or- 52 EDMUND QUINCY. dained for the solid and deliberate drinking by which man justifies his creation ; but Madeira, sir, Madeira is the only standby that never fails a man, and can always be depended upon as something sure and steadfast." I confess to having fallen away myself from the gracious doctrine and works to which he had held so fast ; but I am no bigot, — which, for a heretic, is something remarkable, — and had no scruple about uniting with him in the service he proposed, without demur or protes- tation as to form or substance. Indeed, he disarmed fanaticism by the curious care he be- stowed on making his works conformable to the faith that was in him ; for partly by inheritance, and partly by industrious pains, his old house was undermined by a cellar of wine such as is seldom seen in these days of modern degen- eracy. He is the last gentleman that I know of, of that old school that used to import wine and lay it down annually themselves, their bins forming a kind of vinous calendar sug- gestive of great events. Their degenerate sons are content to be furnished, as they want it, from the dubious stores of the vintner, by retail. " I suppose it was her youth and beauty, sir," WHO PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA? 53 I suggested, " that made her so rememberable to you. You know she was barely turned sev- enteen when she sung in this country." " Partly that, no doubt," replied the Consul, " but not altogether, nor chiefly. No, sir ; it was her genius which made her beauty so glo- rious. She was wonderfully handsome, though. * She was a phantom of delight,' as that Lake fellow says," — it was thus profanely that the Consul designated the poet Wordsworth, whom he could not abide, — " and the best thing he ever said, by Jove ! " "And did you never see her again?" I in- quired. " Once, only," he answered, " eight or nine years afterwards, a year or two before she died. It was at Venice, and in Norma. She was dif- ferent, and yet not changed for the worse. There was an indescribable look of sadness out of her eyes, that touched one oddly, and fixed itself in the memory. But she was something apart and by herself, and stamped herself on one's mind as Rachel did in Caniille or Phedre. It was true genius, and no imitation, that made both of them what they were. But she actually had the physical beauty which Rachel only compelled you to think she had, by the force 54 EDMUND QUINCY. of her genius and consummate dramatic skill, while she was on the scene before you." " But do you rank Malibran with Rachel as a dramatic artist ? " I asked. " I cannot tell," he answered. " But if she had not the studied perfection of Rachel, — which was always the same, and could not be altered without harm, — she had at least a ca- pacity of impulsive self-adaptation about her which made her for the time the character she personated, — not always the same, but such as the woman she represented might have been in the shifting phases of the passion that possessed her. And to think that she died at eight and twenty ! What might not ten years more have made her ! " "It is odd," I observed, "that her fame should be forever connected with the name she got by her first unlucky marriage in New York ; for it was unlucky enough, I believe — was it not ? " "You may say that," responded the Consul, " without fear of denial or qualification. It was disgraceful in its beginning and in its ending. It was a swindle on a large scale ; and poor Maria Garcia was the one who suffered the most by the operation." WHO PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA? 55 "I have always heard," said I, "that old Garcia was cheated out of the price for which he had sold his daughter, and that M. Malibran got his wife on false pretences." " Not altogether so," returned the Consul, " I happen to know all about that matter from the best authority. She was obtained on false pretences, to be sure ; but it was not Garcia that suffered by them. M. Malibran, more- over, never paid the price agreed upon, and yet Garcia got it, for all that." " Indeed ! " I exclaimed. " It must have been a neat operation. I cannot exactly see how the thing was done ; but I have no doubt a tale hangs thereby, and a good one. Is it tellable ? " " I see no reason why not," said the Consul. " The sufferer made no secret of it, and I know of no reason why I should. Mynheer Van Hol- land told me the story himself, in Amsterdam, in the year '35." " And who was he ? " I inquired, " and what had he to do with it ? " " I '11 tell you," responded the Consul, filling his glass, and passing the bottle, " if you will have the goodness to shut the window behind you, and ring for candles ; for it gets chilly $6 EDMUND QUINCY. here among the mountains as soon as the sun is down." I beg your pardon — did you make a remark ? Oh, wJiat moimtains ! — You must really pardon me ; I cannot give you such a clow as that to the identity of my dear Consul, just now, for excellent and sufficient reasons. But, if you have paid your money for the sight of this Number, you may take your choice of all the mountain-ranges on the continent, from the Rocky to the White, and settle him just where you like. Only you must leave a gap to the westward, through which the river — also anony- mous for the present distress — breaks its way, and which gives him half an hour's more sun- shine than he would otherwise be entitled to, and slope the fields down to its margin near a mile off, with their native timber thinned so skilfully as to have the effect of the best land- scape-gardening. It is a grand and lovely scene ; and when I look at it, I do not wonder at one of the Consul's apothegms, namely, that the chief advantage of foreign travel is, that it teaches you that one place is just as good to live in as another. I imagine that the one place he had in his mind at the time was just this one. But that is neither here nor there. WHO PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA f $7 When candles came, we drew our chairs to- gether, and he told me in substance the follow- ing story. I will tell it in my own words, — not that they are so good as his, but because they come more readily to the nib of my pen. II. New York has grown considerably since she was New Amsterdam, and has almost forgotten her whilom dependence on her first godmother. Indeed, had it not been for the historic industry of the erudite Diedrich Knickerbocker, very few of her sons would know much about the obhgations of their nursing mother to their old grandame beyond sea, in the days of the Dutch dynasty. Still, though the old monopoly has been dead these two hundred years, or thereabout, there is I know not how many fold more trafific with her than in the days when it was in full life and force. Doth not that bene- factor of his species, Mr. Udolpho Wolfe, derive thence his immortal or immortalizing Schiedam Schnapps, the virtues whereof, according to his advertisements, are fast transferring dram- drinking from the domain of pleasure to that of positive duty? Tobacco-pipes, too, and toys such as the friendly saint, whom Protestant 58 EDMUND QUINCY. children have been taught by Dutch tradition to invoke, dehghts to drop into the votive stocking, — they come from the mother-city, where she sits upon the waters, quite as much a Sea-Cybele as Venice herself. And linens, too, fair and fresh and pure as the maidens that weave them, come forth from Dutch looms ready to grace our tables, or to deck our beds. And the mention of these brings me back to my story, though the immediate connection be- tween Holland linen and Malibran's marriage may not at first view be palpable to sight. Still it is a fact that the web of this part of her variegated destiny was spun and woven out of threads of flax that took the substantial shape of fine Hollands ; and this is the way in which it came to pass. Mynheer Van Holland, of whom the Consul spoke just now, you must understand to have been one of the chief merchants of Amsterdam, a city whose merchants are princes, and have been kings. His transactions extended to all parts of the Old World, and did not skip over the New. His ships visited the harbor of New York as well as of London ; and, as he died two or three years ago a very rich man, his adventures in general must have been more re- WHO PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA ? 59 munerative than the one I am going to relate. In the autumn of the year 1825 it seemed good to this worthy merchant to despatch a vessel, with a cargo chiefly made up of linens, to the market of New York. The honest man little dreamed with what a fate his ship was fraught, wrapped up in those flaxen folds. He hap- pened to be in London the winter before, and was present at the d^but of Maria Garcia at the King's Theatre. He must have admired the beauty, grace, and promise of the youthful Rosina, had he been ten times a Dutchman ; and if he heard of her intended emigration to America, as he possibly might have done, it most likely excited no particular emotion in his phlegmatic bosom. He could not have imagined that the exportation of a little sing- ing-girl to New York should interfere with a potential venture of his own in fair linen. The gods kindly hid the future from his eyes, so that he might enjoy the comic vexation her lively sallies caused to Doctor Bartolo in the play, unknowing that she would be the inno- cent cause of a more serious provocation to himself in downright earnest. He thought of this himself after it had all happened. Well, the good ship " Steenbok " had pros- 6o EDMUND QUINCY. perous gales and fair weather across the ocean, and dropped anchor off the Battery with some days to spare from the amount due to the voy- age. The consignee came off and took posses- sion of the cargo, and duly transferred it to his own warehouse. Though the advantages of advertising were not as fully understood in those days of comparative ignorance as they have been since, he duly announced the goods which he had received, and waited for a cus- tomer. He did not have to wait long. It was but a day or two after the appearance of the advertisement in the newspapers that he had prime Holland linens on hand, just received from Amsterdam, when he was waited upon by a gentleman of good address, and evidently of French extraction, who inquired of the con- signee, whom we will call Mr. Schulemberg for the nonce, " whether he had the linens he had advertised yet on hand." " They are still on hand and on sale," said Mr. Schulemberg. " What is the price of the entire consign ment ? " inquired the customer. " Fifty thousand dollars," responded Mr. Schulemberg. "And the terms?" WHO PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA? 6 1 " Cash on delivery." " Very good," replied the obliging buyer. " If they be of the quality you describe in your advertisement, I will take them on those terms. Send them down to my warehouse, No. Ii8 Pearl Street, to-morrow morning, and I will send you the money." "And your name ?" inquired Mr. Schulem- berg. " Is Malibran," responded the courteous pur- chaser. The two merchants bowed politely, the one to the other, mutually well pleased with the morning's word, and bade each other good- day. Mr. Schulemberg knew but little, if any thing, about his new customer ; but, as the transaction was to be a cash one, he did not mind that. He calculated his commissions, gave orders to his head clerk to see the goods duly delivered the next morning, and went on Change, and thence to dinner, in the enjoy- ment of a complacent mind and a good appe- tite. It is to be supposed that M. Malibran did the same. At any rate, he had the most reason, at least, according to his probable no- tions of mercantile morality and success. 62 EDMUND QUINCY. III. The next day came, and with it came, be- times, the packages of linens to M. MaUbran's warehouse in Pearl Street ; but the price for the same did not come as punctually to Mr. Schulcmberg's counting-room, according to the contract under which they were delivered. In point of fact, M. Malibran was not in at the time ; but there was no doubt that he would attend to the matter without delay, as soon as he came in. A cash transaction docs not necessarily imply so much the instant pres- ence of coin as the unequivocal absence of credit. A day or two more or less is of no material consequence, only there is to be no delay for sales and returns before payment. So Mr. Schulemberg gave himself no uneasi- ness about the matter when two, three, and even five and six days had slid away without producing the apparition of the current money of the merchant. A man who transacted af- fairs on so large a scale as M. Malibran, and conducted them on the sound basis of ready money, might safely be trusted for so short a time. But when a week had elapsed, and no tidings had been received either of purchaser or of purchase-money, Mr. Schulemberg WHO PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA ? 63 thought it time for himself to interfere in his own proper person. Accordingly, he inconti- nently proceeded to the counting-house of M. Malibran to receive the promised price or to know the reason why. If he failed to obtain the one satisfaction, he at least could not com- plain of being disappointed of the other. Mat- ters seemed to be in some little unbusiness-like confusion, and the clerks in a high state of gleeful excitement. Addressing himself to the chief among them, Mr. Schulemberg asked the pertinent question, — " Is M. Malibran in ? " " No, sir," was the answer, " he is not ; and he will not be, just at present." "But when will he be in? for I must see him on some pressing business of importance." " Not to-day, sir," replied the clerk, smiling expressively. " He cannot be interrupted to- day on any business of any kind whatever." " The deuce he can't ! " returned Mr. Schul- emberg. " I '11 see about that very soon, I can tell you. He promised to pay me cash for fifty thousand dollars' worth of Holland linens a week ago. I have not seen the color of his money yet, and I mean to wait no longer. Where does he live ? for, if he be alive, I will 64 EDMUND QUINCY. see him, and hear what he has to say for him- self, and that speedily." " Indeed, sir," pleasantly expostulated the clerk, " I think, when you understand the circum- stances of the case, you will forbear disturbing M. Malibran this day of all others in his life." " Why, what the devil ails this day above all others," said Mr. Schulemberg somewhat test- ily, " that he can't see his creditors, and pay his debts on it? " " Why, sir, the fact is," the clerk replied, with an air of interest and importance, " it is M. Malibran's wedding-day. Me marries this morning the Signorina Garcia, and I am sure you would not molest him with business on such an occasion as that." " But my fifty thousand dollars ! " persisted the consignee. " And why have they not been paid ? " "Oh, give yourself no uneasiness at all about that, sir," replied the clerk, with the air of one to whom the handling of such trifles was a daily occurrence. " M. Malibran will, of course, attend to that matter the moment he is a little at leisure. In fact, I imagine, that, in the hurry and bustle inseparable from an event of this nature, the circumstance has entirely es- IVIIO PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA ? 65 caped his mind ; but, as soon as he returns to business again, I will recall it to his recollec- tion, and you will hear from him without delay." The clerk was right in his augury as to the effect his intelligence would have upon the creditor. It was not a clerical error on his part when he supposed that Mr. Schulemberg would not choose to enact the part of skeleton at the wedding-breakfast of the young Prima Don7ia. There is something about the great events of life, which cannot happen a great many times to anybody, — " A wedding or a funeral, A mourning or a festival," that touches the strings of the one human heart of us ail, and makes it return no uncer- tain sound. Shylock himself would hardly have demanded his pound of flesh on the wedding- day, had it been Ajitonio that was to espouse the fair Portia. Even he would have allowed three days of grace before demanding the specific performance of his bond. Now, Mr. Schulemberg was very far from being a Shy- lock, and he was also a constant attendant upon the opera, and a devoted admirer of the 66 EDMUND QUINCY. lovely Garcia. So that he could not wonder that a man on the eve of marriage with that divine creature should forget every other con- sideration in the immediate contemplation of his happiness, even if it were the consideration for a cargo of prime linens, and one to the tune of fifty thousand dollars. And it is altogether likely that the mundane reflection occurred to him, and made him easier in his mind under the delay, that old Garcia was by no means the kind of man to give away a daughter who dropped gold and silver from her sweet lips whenever she opened them in public, as the princess in the fairy-tale did pearls and dia- monds, to any man who could not give him a solid equivalent in return. So that, in fact, he regarded the notes of the Signorina Garcia ai so much collateral security for his debt. So Mr. Schulcmbcrg was content to bide his reasonable time for the discharge of M. Mali, bran's indebtedness to his principal. lie had advised Mynheer Van Holland of the speedy sale of his consignment, and given him hopes of a quick return of the proceeds. But, as days wore away, it seemed to him that the time he was called on to bide was growing into an un- reasonable one. I cannot state with precision WHO PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA ? 6"/ exactly how long he waited. Whether he dis- turbed the sweet influences of the honeymoon by his intrusive presence, or permitted that nectareous satellite to fill her horns, and wax and wane in peace, before he sought to bring the bridegroom down to the things of earth, are questions which I must leave to the discre- tion of my readers to settle, each for himself or herself, according to their own notions of the proprieties of the case. But at the proper time, after patience had thrown up in disgust the office of a virtue, he took his hat and cane one fine morning, and walked down to No. ii8 Pearl Street, for the double purpose of wishing M. Malibran joy of his marriage, and of receiv- ing the price — promised long, and long withheld — of the linens which form the tissue of my story. " The gods gave ear, and granted half his prayer : The rest the winds dispersed in empty air." There was not the slightest difficulty about his imparting his epithalamic congratulation ; but as to his receiving the numismatic consideration for which he hoped to return, that was an en- tirely different affair. He found matters in the Pearl Street counting-house again apparently something out of joint, but with a less smiling 68 EDMUND QUINCY. and sunny atmosphere pervading them than he had remarked on his last visit. He was received by M. Mahbran with courtesy, a Httle over- strained, perhaps, and not as flowing and gracious as at their first interview, Prehmi- naries over, Mr. Schulemberg, plunging with epic energy into the midst of things, said, " I have called, M. Malibran, to receive the fifty thousand dollars, which, you will remember, you engaged to pay down for the linens I sold you on such a day. I can make allowance for the interruption which has prevented your at tending to this business sooner ; but it is nov^ high time that it was settled." " I consent to it all, monsieur," replied M Malibran with a deprecatory gesture. " You have reason, and I am desolated that it is thtf impossible that you ask of me to do." " How, sir ! " demanded the creditor. " What do you mean by the impossible ? You do not mean to deny that you agreed to pay cash for the goods? " " My faith, no, monsieur," shruggingly re- sponded M. Malibran. " I avow it ; you have reason ; I promised to pay the money, as you say it ; but, if I have not the money to pay you, how can I pay you the money ? What to do ? " fVJ/O PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA ? 69 *' I don't understand you, sir," returned Mr. Schulemberg. "You have not the money? And you do not mean to pay me according to agreement ? " " But, monsieur, how can I, when I have not money ? Have you not heard that I have made — what you call it? — failure, yesterday? I am grieved of it thrice sensibly ; but if it went of my life, I could not pay you for your fine linens, which were of a good market at the price. " Indeed, sir," replied Mr. Schulemberg, " I had not heard of your misfortunes; and I am heartily sorry for them, on my own account and yours, but still more on account of your charm- ing wife. But there is no great harm done, after all. Send the linens back to me, and ac- counts shall be square between us, and I will submit to the loss of the interest." "Ah, but, monsieur, you are too good, and madame will be recognizant to you forever for your gracious politeness. But, my God ! it is impossible that I return to you the linen. I have sold it, monsieur — I have sold it all ! " " Sold it ? " reiterated Mr. Schulemberg, re- gardless of the rules of etiquette, — "sold it? And to whom, pray ? and when ? " 70 EDMUND QUINCY. " To M. Garcia, my fathcr-in-the-la\v," an- swered the catechumen blandly ; " and it is a week that he has received it," " Then I must bid you a good-morning, sir," said Mr. Schulemberg, rising hastily, and col- lecting his hat and gloves; " for I must lose no time in taking measures to recover the goods before they have changed hands again." " Pardon, monsieur," interrupted the poor but honest Malibran. " But it is too late ! One cannot regain them. M. Garcia embarked himself for Mexico }'esterday morning, and car- ried them all with him." Imagine the consternation and rage of poor Mr. Schulemberg at finding that he was sold, though the goods were not ! I decline report- ing the conversation any further, lest its strength of expression and force of expletive might be too much for the more queasy of my readers. Suffice it to say that the sii.nndlce, if I may be allowed the royalty of coining a word, at once freed his own mind, and imprisoned the body of M. Malibran ; for in those days impris- onment for debt was a recognized institution, and I think few of its strongest opponents will deny that this was a case to which it was no abuse to apply it. lVI/0 PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA f 71 IV. I regret that I am compelled to leave this exemplary merchant in captivity ; but the exi- gencies of my story, the moral of which beckons me away to the distant coast of Mexico, require it at my hands. The reader may be consoled, however, by the knowledge that he obtained his liberation in due time, his Dutch creditor being entirely satisfied that nothing whatsoever could be squeezed out of him by passing him between the bars of the debtor's prison, though that was all the satisfaction he ever did get. How he accompanied his young wife to Europe, and there lived by the coining of her voice into drachmas, as her father had done before him, needs not be told here ; nor yet how she was di- vorced from him, and made another matrimonial venture in partnership with De B . I have nothing to do with him or her, after the bargain and sale of which she was the object, and the consequences which immediately resulted from it ; and here, accordingly, I take my leave of them. But my story is not quite done yet : it must now pursue the fortunes of the enterpris- ing impresario, Signer Garcia, who had so deftly turned his daughter into a shipload of fine linens. EDMUND QUINCY. This excellent person sailed, as M. Malibran told Mr. Schulcmberg, for Vera Cruz, with an assorted cargo, consisting of singers, fiddlers, and, as aforesaid, of Mynheer Van Holland's fine linens. The voyage was as prosperous as was due to such an argosy. If a single Am- phion could not be drowned by the utmost malice of gods and men, so long as he kept his voice in order, what possible mishap could be- fall a whole shipload of them ? The vessel ar- rived safely under the shadow of San Juan de Ulua ; and her precious freight in all its varie- ties was welcomed with a tropical enthusiasm. The market was bare of linen and of song, and it was hard to say which found the readiest sale. Competition raised the price of both articles to a fabulous height. So the good Garcia had the benevolent satisfaction of clothing the naked, and making the ears that heard him to bless him at the same time. After selling his linens at a great advance on the cost-price, consider- ing he had only paid his daughter for them, and having given a series of the most successful concerts ever known in those latitudes, Signor Garcia set forth for the Aztec City. As the relations of mcum and iuuin were not upon the most satisfactory' footing just then at Vera WHO PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA ? 73 Cruz, he thought it most prudent to carry his well-won treasure with him to the capital. His progress thither was a triumphal procession. Not Cortes, not General Scott himself, marched more gloriously along the steep and rugged road that leads from the sea-coast to the table- land than did this son of song. Every city on his line of march was the monument of a vic- tor>', and from each one he levied tribute, and bore spoils away. And the vanquished thanked him for this spoiling of their goods. Arrived at the splendid city, at that time the largest and most populous on the North Ameri- can continent, he speedily made himself master of it, — a welcome conqueror. The Mexicans, with the genuine love for song of their South- ern ancestors, had had but few opportunities for gratifying it such as that now offered to them. Garcia was a tenor of great compass, and a most skilful and accomplished singer. The artists who accompanied him were of a high order of merit, if not of the very first class. Mexico had never heard the like, and, though a hard-money country, was glad to take their notes, and give them gold in return. They were feasted and flattered in the intervals of the concerts, and the bright eyes of senoras and 74 EDMUND QUINCY. sefioritas rained influence upon them on the off nights, as their fair hands rained flowers upon the on ones. And they have a very pleasant way, in those golden realms, of giving orna- ments of diamonds and other precious stones to virtuous singers, as we give pencil-cases and gold watches to meritorious railway-conductors and hotel-clerks, as a testimonial of the sense we entertain of their private characters and public services. The gorgeous East herself never showered " on her kings barbaric pearl and gold " with a richer hand than the City of Mexico poured out the glittering rain over the portly person of the happy Garcia. Saturated at length with the golden flood and its foam of pearl and diamond — if, indeed, singer were ever capable of such saturation, and were not rather permeable forever, like a sieve of the Danaides, — saturated, or satisfied that it was all run out, he prepared to take up his line of march back again to the City of the True Cross. Mexico mourned over his going, and sent him forth upon his way with blessings, and prayers for his safe return. But alas ! the blessings and the prayers were alike vain. The saints were either deaf or busy, or had gone a journey, and either did not hear WJIO PA ID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA ? 75 or did not mind the vows that were sent up to them. At any rate, they did not take that care of the worthy Garcia which their devotees had a right to expect of them. Turning his back on the halls of the Montezumas, where he had revelled so sumptuously, he proceeded on his way towards the Atlantic coast, as fast as his mules thought fit to carry him and his beloved treasure. With the proceeds of his linens and his lungs, he was rich enough to retire from the vicissitudes of operatic life to some safe retreat in his native Spain or his adoptive Italy. Filled with happy imaginings, he fared onward, the bells of his mules keeping time with the melo- dious joy of his heart, until he had descended from the tierra caliente to the wilder region on the hither side of Jalapa. As the narrow road turned sharply, at the foot of a steeper descent than common, into a dreary valley, made yet more gloomy by the shadow of the hill behind intercepting the sun, though the afternoon was not far advanced, the impresario was made un- pleasantly aware of the transitory nature of man's hopes and the vanity of his joys. When his train wound into the rough open space, it found itself surrounded by a troop of men whose looks and gestures bespoke their func- 76 EDMUND QUINCY. tion without the intermediation of an inter- preter. But no interpreter was needed in this case, as Signor Garcia was a Spaniard by birth, and their expressive pantomime was a suffi- ciently eloquent substitute for speech. In plain English, he had fallen among thieves, with very little chance of any good Samaritan coming by to help him. Now, Signor Garcia had had dealings with brigands and banditti all his operatic life. In- deed, he had often drilled them till they were perfect in their exercises, and got them up re- gardless of expense. Under his direction they had often rushed forward to the footlights, pouring into the helpless mass before them re- peated volleys of explosive crotchets. But this was a very different chorus that now saluted his eyes. It was the real thing, instead of the make-believe, and in the opinion of Signor Garcia, at least, very much inferior to it. In- stead of the steeple-crowned hat, jauntily feath- ered and looped, these irregulars wore huge sombreros, much the worse for time and weather, flapped over their faces. For the velvet jacket with the two-inch tail, which had nearly broken up the friendship between Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Tupman, when the latter gentleman pro- WHO PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA ? 77 posed induing himself with one, on the occasion of Mrs. Leo Hunter's fancy-dress breakfast, — for this integument, I say, these minions of the moon had blankets round their shoulders, thrown back in preparation for actual service. Instead of those authentic cross-garterings in which your true bandit rejoices, like a new Malvolio, to tie up his legs, perhaps to keep them from running away, these false knaves wore, some of them, ragged boots up to their thighs, while others had no crural coverings at all, and only rough sandals, such as the Indians there use, between their feet and the ground. They were picturesque, perhaps, but not at- tractive to wealthy travellers. But the wealthy travellers were attractive to them : so they came together, all the same. Such as they were, however, there they were, fierce, sad, and sallow, with vicious-looking knives in their belts, and guns of various parentage in their hands, while their captain bade our good man stand and deliver. There was no room for choice. He had an escort, to be sure ; but it was entirely unequal to the emergency, even if it were not, as was afterwards shrewdly suspected, in league with the robbers. The enemy had the advantage 78 EDMUND QUINCY. of arms, position, and numbers ; and there was nothing for him to do but to disgorge his hoarded gains at once, or to have his breath stopped first, and his estate summarily admin- istered upon afterwards, by these his casual heirs, as the King of France, by virtue of his Droit d'Auhaine, would have confiscated Yor- ick's six shirts and pair of black silk breeches, in spite of his eloquent protest against such injustice, had he chanced to die in his Most Christian Majesty's dominions. As Signor Gar- cia had an estate in his breath, from which he could draw a larger yearly rent than the rolls of many a Spanish grandee could boast, he wisely chose the part of discretion, and surrendered at the same. His new acquaintances showed them- selves expert practitioners in the breaking-open of trunks and the rifling of treasure-boxes. All his beloved doubloons, all his cherished dollars, for the which no Yankee ever felt a stronger passion, took swift wings, and flew from his coffers to alight in the hands of the adversary. The sacred recesses of his pockets, and those of his companions, were sacred no longer from the sacrilegious hands of the spoilers. The breastpins were ravished from the shirt-frills, — for in those days studs were not, — and the WHO PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA ? 79 rings snatched from the reluctant fingers. All the shining testimonials of Mexican admiration were transferred with the celerity of magic into the possession of the chivalry of the road. Not Faulconbridge himself could have been more resolved to come on at the beckoning of gold and silver than were they, and, good Catholics though they were, it is most likely that Bell, Book, and Candle would have had as little restraining influence over them as he professed to feel. At last they rested from their labors. To the victors belonged the spoils, as they discov- ered with instinctive sagacity that they should do, though the apothegm had not yet received the authentic seal of American statesmanship. Science and skill had done their utmost, and poor Garcia and his companions in misery stood in the centre of the ring, stripped of every thing but the clothes on their backs. The duty of the day being satisfactorily per- formed, the victors felt that they had a right to some relaxation after their toils. And now a change came over them which might have re- minded Signor Garcia of the banditti of the green-room, with whose habits he had been so long familiar, and whose operations he had 8o EDMUND QUINCY. himself directed. Some one of the troop, who however "fit for strategems and spoils," had yet music in his soul, called aloud for a song. The idea was hailed with acclamations. Not satisfied with the capitalized results of his voice to which they had helped themselves, they were unwilling to let their prey go, until they had also ravished from him some speci- mens of the airy mintage whence they had issued. Accordingly the Catholic vagabonds seated themselves on the ground, a fuligi- nous parterre to look upon, and called upon Garcia for a song. A rock which projected itself from the side of the hill served for a stage as well as the " green plat " in the wood near Athens did for the company of Manager Quince, and there was no need of a " tiring- room," as poor Garcia had no clothes to change for those he stood in. Not the Hebrews by the waters of Babylon, when their captors de- manded of them a song of Zion, had less stomach for the task. But the prime tenor was now before an audience that would brook neither denial nor excuse. Nor hoarseness, nor catarrh, nor sudden illness, certified unto by the friendly physician, would avail him now. The demand was irresistible ; for, when he WffO PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA ? Si hesitated, the persuasive though stern mouth of a musket hinted to him in expressive silence that he had better prevent its speech with song. So he had to make his first appearance upon that " unworthy scaffold," before an audience, which, multifold as his experience had been, was one such as he had never sung to yet. As the shadows of evening began to fall, rough torches of pine-wood were lighted, and shed a glare such as Salvator Rosa loved to kindle, upon a scene such as he delighted to paint. The ras- cals had taste ; that the tenor himself could not deny. They knew the choice bits of the operas which held the stage forty years ago, and they called for them wisely, and applauded his efforts vociferously. Nay, more, in the height of their enthusiasm they would toss him one of his own doubloons or dollars, instead of the bouquets usually hurled at well-deserving sing- ers. They well judged that these flowers that never fade would be the tribute he would value most, and so they rewarded his meritorious strains out of his own stores, as Claude Duval or Richard Turpin, in the golden days of high- way robbery, would sometimes generously re- turn a guinea to a traveller he had just lightened of his purse, to enable him to con- 82 EDMUND QUINCY. tinue his journey. It was lucky for the un- fortunate Garcia that their approbation took this solid shape, or he would have been badly off indeed ; for it was all he had to begin the world with over again. After his appreciating audience had exhausted their musical reper- tory, and had as many encores as they thought good, they broke up the concert, and betook themselves to their fastnesses among the mountains, leaving their patient to find his way to the coast as best he might, with a pocket as light as his soul was heavy. At Vera Cruz a concert or two furnished him with the means of embarking himself and his troupe for Europe, and leaving the New World forever behind him. And here I must leave him, for my story is done. The reader hungering for a moral may discern, that, though Signor Garcia received the price he asked for his lovely daughter, it advantaged him nothing, and that he not only lost it all, but it was the occasion of his losing every thing else he had. This is very well as far as it goes; but then it is equally true that M. Malibran actually obtained his wife, and that Mynheer Van Holland paid for her. I dare say all this can be reconciled with the eternal WHO PAID FOR THE PRIMA DONNA ? 83 fitness of things ; but I protest I don't see how it is to be done. It is " all a muddle" in my mind. I cannot even affirm that the banditti were ever hanged ; and I am quite sure that the unlucky Dutch merchant, whose goods were so comically mixed up with this whole history, never had any poetical or material jus- tice for his loss of them. But it is as much the reader's business as mine to settle these casuis- tries. I only undertook to tell him who it was that paid for the Prima Donna — and I have done it. V. " I consider that a good story," said the Con- sul, when he had finished the narration out of which I have compounded the foregoing, " and, what is not always the case with a good story, it is a true one." I cordially concurred with my honored friend in this opinion, and if the reader should unfortu- nately differ from me on this point, I beg him to believe that it is entirely my fault. As the Consul told it to me, it was an excellent good story. " Poor Mynheer Van Holland," he added, laughing, " never got over that adventure. Not that the loss was material to him, — he 84 EDMUND QUINCY. was too rich for that, — but the provocation of his fifty thousand dollars going to a parcel of Mexican ladrones, after buying an opera-singer for a Frenchman on its way, was enough to rouse even Dutch human nature to the swear- ing-point. He could not abide either French- men or opera-singers all the rest of his life. And, by Jove ! I don't wonder at it." Nor I, neither, for the matter of that. — Wensley, and Other Stories. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. (born, 1809.) FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. DO I think that the particular form of lying often seen in newspapers, under the title, " From our Foreign Correspondent," does any harm ? — Why, no, — I don't know that it does. I suppose it does n't really deceive people any more than the " Arabian Nights " or " Gulliver's Travels " do. Sometimes the writers compile too carelessly, though, and mix up facts out of geographies, and stories out of the penny papers, so as to mislead those who are desirous of information. I cut a piece out of one of the papers, the other day, which con- tains a number of improbabilities, and, I sus- pect, misstatements. I will send up and get it for you, if you would like to hear it. Ah, this is it ; it is headed " OUR SUMATRA CORRESPONDENCE. " This island is now the property of the Stamford family, — having been won, it is said, 85 86 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. in a raffle, by Sir Stamford, during the stock-gambling mania of the South-Sea Scheme. The history of this gentleman may be found in an interesting series of questions (unfortu- nately not yet answered) contained in the * Notes and Queries.* This island is entirely surrounded by the ocean, which here contains a large amount of saline substance, crystallizing in cubes remarkable for their symmetry, and frequently displays on its surface, during calm weather, the rainbow tints of the celebrated South-Sea bubbles. The summers are oppres- sively hot, and the winters very probably cold ; but this fact cannot be ascertained precisely, as, for some peculiar reason, the mercury in these latitudes never shrinks, as in more -north- ern regions, and thus the thermometer is ren- dered useless in winter. " The principal vegetable productions of the island are the pepper-tree and the bread-fruit tree. Pepper being very abundantly produced, a benevolent society was organized in London during the last century for supplying the na- tives with vinegar and oysters, as an addition to that delightful condiment. (Note received from Dr. D. P.) It is said, however, that, as the oysters were of the kind called natives in FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 8/ England, the natives of Sumatra, in obedience to a natural instinct, refused to touch them, and confined themselves entirely to the crew of the vessel in which they were brought over. This information was received from one of the oldest inhabitants, a native himself, and ex- ceedingly fond of missionaries. He is said also to be very skilful in the cuisine peculiar to the island. " During the season of gathering pepper, the persons employed are subject to various incom- modities, the chief of which is violent and long- continued sternutation, or sneezing. Such is the vehemence of these attacks, that the unfor- tunate subjects of them are often driven back- wards for great distances at immense speed, on the well-known principle of the aeolipile. Not being able to see where they are going, these poor creatures dash themselves to pieces against the rocks, or are precipitated over the cliffs, and thus many valuable lives are lost annually. As, during the whole pepper-harvest, they feed exclusively on this stimulant, they become ex- ceedingly irritable. The smallest injury is resented with ungovernable rage. A young man suffering from the pepper-fever, as it is called, cudgelled another most severely for appropria- 88 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. ting a superannuated relative of trifling value, and was only pacified by having a present made him of a pig of that peculiar species of swine called the Peccavi by the Catholic Jews, who, it is well known, abstain from swine's flesh in imitation of the Mahometan Buddhists. " The bread-tree grows abundantly. Its branches are well known to Europe and America under the familiar name of maccarojii. The smaller twigs are called vermicelli. They have a decided animal flavor, as may be ob- served in the soups containing them. Macca- roni, being tubular, is the favorite habitat of a very dangerous insect, which is rendered pe- culiarly ferocious by being boiled. The gov- ernment of the island, therefore, never allows a stick of it to be exported without being accom- panied by a piston with which its cavity may at any time be thoroughly swept out. These are commonly lost or stolen before the macca- roni arrives among us. It therefore always contains many of these insects, which, how- ever, generally die of old age in the shops, so that accidents from this source are compara- tively rare. " The fruit of the bread-tree consists princi- MUSIC-POUNDING. 89 pally of hot rolls. The buttered-muffin va- riety is supposed to be a hybrid with the cocoa-nut palm, the cream found on the milk of the cocoa-nut exuding from the hy- brid in the shape of butter, just as the ripe fruit is splitting, so as to fit it for the tea- table, where it is commonly served up with cold " — There, — I don't want to read any more of it. You see that many of these statements are highly improbable. No, I shall not mention the paper. — The Autocrat of the Breakfast- Table. MUSIC-POUNDING. The old Master was talking about a concert he had been to hear. — I don't like your chopped music anyway. That woman — she had more sense in her little finger than forty medical societies — Florence Nightingale — says that the music you pour out is good for sick folks, and the music you poimd out is n't. Not that exactly, but something like it. I have been to hear some music- pounding. It was a young woman, with as many white muslin flounces round her as the planet Saturn has rings, that did it. She gave 90 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. the music-stool a twirl or two and fluffed down on to it like a whirl of soap-suds in a hand- basin. Then she pushed up her cuffs as if she was going to fight for the champion's belt. Then she worked her wrists and her hands, to limber 'em, I suppose, and spread out her fingers till they looked as though they would pretty much cover the key-board, from the growling end to the little squeaky one. Then those two hands of hers made a jump at the keys as if they were a couple of tigers coming down on a flock of black and white sheep, and the piano gave a great howl as if its tail had been trod on. Dead stop, — so still you could hear your hair growing. Then another jump, and another howl, as if the piano had two tails and )ou had trod on both of 'cm at once, and then a grand clatter and scramble and string of jumps, up and down, back and forward, one hand over the other, like a stampede of rats and mice more than like any thing I call music. I like to hear a woman sing, and I like to hear a fiddle sing, but these noises they hammer out of their wood and ivory anvils — don't talk to me, I know the difference between a bull-frog and a wood-thrush. — The Poet at the Breakfast- Table. THE OLD MAJV DREAMS. 9 1 THE OLD MAN DREAMS. for one hour of youthful joy ! Give back my twentieth spring ! 1 'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy Than reign a gray-beard king ! Off with the wrinkled spoils of age ! Away with learning's crown ! Tear out life's wisdom-written page, And dash its trophies down ! One moment let my life-blood stream From boyhood's fount of flame ! Give me one giddy, reeling dream Of life all love and fame ! My listening angel heard the prayer, And calmly smiling, said, " If I but touch thy silvered hair. Thy hasty wish hath sped. " But is there nothing in thy track To bid thee fondly stay, While the swift seasons hurry back To find the wished-for day ? " — Ah, truest soul of womankind ! Without thee, what were life ? 92 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. One bliss I cannot leave behind : I '11 take — my — precious — wife ! — The angel took a sapphire pen And wrote in rainbow dew, " The man would be a boy again, And be a husband too ! " — " And is there nothing yet unsaid Before the change appears ? Remember, all their gifts have fled With those dissolving years ! " Why, yes ; for memory would recall My fond paternal joys; I could not bear to leave them all — I '11 take — my — girl — and — boys ! The smiling angel dropped his pen, — " Why this will never do ; The man would be a boy again, And be a father too ! " And so I laughed, — my laughter woke The household with its noise, — And wrote my dream, when morning broke, To please the gray-haired boys. — The A utocrat of the Breakfast- Table. DISLIKES. 93 DISLIKES. I want it to be understood that I consider that a certain number of persons are at Hberty to dislike me peremptorily, without showing- cause, and that they give no offence whatever in so doing. If I did not cheerfully acquiesce in this senti- ment towards myself on the part of others, I should not feel at liberty to indulge my own aversions. I try to cultivate a Christian feeling to all my fellow-creatures, but inasmuch as I must also respect truth and honesty, I confess to myself a certain number of inalienable dislikes and prejudices, some of which may possibly be shared by others. Some of these are purely in- stinctive, for others I can assign a reason. Our likes and dislikes play so important a part in the order of things that it is well to see on what they are founded. There are persons I meet occasionally who are too intelligent by half for my liking. They know my thoughts beforehand, and tell me what I was going to say. Of course they are masters of all my knowledge, and a good deal besides ; have read all the books I have read, and in later editions ; have had all the experi- ences I have been through, and more too. In 94 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. my private opinion every mother's son of them will lie at any time rather than confess ignorance. — I have a kind of dread, rather than hatred, of persons with a large excess of vitality ; great feeders, great laughers, great story-tellers, who come sweeping over their company with a huge tidal wave of animal spirits and boisterous merriment. I have pretty good spirits myself, and enjoy a little mild pleasantry, but I am oppressed and extinguished by these great lusty, noisy creatures, and feel as if I were a mute at a funeral when they get into full blast. — I cannot get along much better with those drooping, languid people, whose vitality falls short as much as that of the others is in excess. I have not life enough for two ; I wish I had. It is not very enlivening to meet a fellow-creature whose expression and accents say, " You are the hair that breaks the camel's back of my en- durance, you are the last drop that makes my cup of woe run over " ; persons whose heads drop on one side like those of toothless infants, whose voices recall the tones in which our old snuffling choir used to wail out the verses of " Life is the time to serve the Lord." DISLIKES. 95 — There is another style which does not cap- tivate me. I recognize an attempt at the grand manner now and then, in persons who are well enough in their way, but of no particular im- portance, socially or otherwise. Some family tradition of wealth or distinction is apt to be at the bottom of it, and it survives all the advan- tages that used to set it off. I like family pride as well as my neighbors, and respect the high- born fellow-citizen whose progenitors have not worked in their shirt-sleeves for the last two generations full as much as I ought to. But grand-pcre oblige ; a person with a known grand- father is too distinguished to find it necessary to put on airs. The few Royal Princes I have happened to know were very easy people to get along with, and had not half the social knee-action I have often seen in the collapsed dowagers who lifted their eyebrows at me in my earlier years. — My heart does not warm as it should do towards the persons, not intimates, who are al- ways too glad to see me when we meet by acci- dent, and discover all at once that they have a vast deal to unbosom themselves of to me. — There is one blameless person whom I can- not love and have no excuse for hating. It is 96 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. the innocent fellow-creature, otherwise inoffen- sive to me, whom I find I have involuntarily joined on turning a corner. I suppose the Mis- sissippi, which was flowing quietly along, mind- ing its own business, hates the Missouri for coming into it all at once witii its muddy stream. I suppose the Missouri in like man- ner hates the Mississippi for diluting with its limpid, but insipid current the rich reminis- cences of the varied soils though which its own stream has wandered. I will not com- pare myself to the clear or the turbid cur- rent, but I will own that my heart sinks when I find all of a sudden I am in for a corner con- fluence, and I cease loving my neighbor as my- self until I can get away from him. — The Poet at the Breakfast-Table. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. (born iSi2.) SAM LAWSON. EVERY New England village, if you only think of it, must have its do-nothing as regularly as it has its school-house or meeting- house. Nature is alvvay wide awake in the matter of compensation. Work, thrift, and in- dustry are such an incessant steam-power in Yankee life, that society would burn itself out with intense friction were there not interposed here and there the lubricating power of a de- cided do-nothing, — a man who won't be hur- ried, and won't work, and will take his ease in his own way, in spite of the whole protest of his neighborhood to the contrary. And there is on the face of the whole earth no do-nothing whose softness, idleness, general inaptitude to labor, and everlasting, universal shiftlessness can compare with that of this worthy, as found in a brisk Yankee village. 97 ga HARRIET BEECH ER STOWE. Sam Lawson filled this post with ample honor in Oldtown. He was a fellow dear to the souls of all " us boys " in the village, because, from the special nature of his position, he never had any thing more pressing to do than croon and gossip with us. He was ready to spend hours in tinkering a boy's jack-knife, or mending his skate, or start at the smallest notice to watch at a woodchuck's hole, or give incessant service in tending a dog's sprained paw. He was always on hand to go fishing with us on Saturday after- noons ; and I have known him to sit hour after hour on the bank, surrounded by a troop of boys, baiting our hooks and taking off our fish. He was a soft-hearted old body, and the wrigglings and contortions of our prey used to disturb his repose so that it was a regular part of his work to kill the fish by breaking their necks when he took them from the hook. " Why, lordy massy, boys," he would say, " I can't bear to see no kind o' critter in torment. These 'ere pouts ain't to blame for bein' fish, and ye ought to put 'em out of their misery. Fish lies their rights as well as any of us." . . . Sam was of respectable family, and not desti- tute of education. He was an expert in at least five or six different kinds of handicraft, in all of SAM LA IVSON. 99 which he had been pronounced by the knowing ones to be a capable workman, " if only he would stick to it." He had a blacksmith's shop, where, when the fit was on him, he would shoe a horse better than any man in the country. No one could supply a missing screw, or apply a timely brace, with more adroitness. He could mend cracked china so as to be almost as good as new ; he could use carpenter's tools as well as a born carpenter, and would doctor a rheumatic door or a shaky window better than half the professional artisans in wood. No man could put a refractory clock to rights with more in- genuity than Sam, — that is, if you would give him his time to be about it. I shall never forget the wrath and dismay which he roused in my Aunt Lois's mind by the leisurely way in which, after having taken our own venerable kitchen clock to pieces, and strewn the fragments all over the kitchen, he would roost over it in endless incubation, tell- ing stories, entering into long-winded theologi- cal discussions, smoking pipes, and giving his- tories of all the other clocks in Oldtown, with occasional memoirs of those in Needmore, the North Parish, and Podunk, as placidly 100 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. indifferent to all her volleys of sarcasm and contempt, her stinging expostulations and philippics, as the sailing old moon is to the frisky, animated barking of some puppy dog of earth. " Why, ye see, Miss Lois," he would say, " clocks can't be druv ; that 's jest what they can't. Some things can be druv, and then agin some things can't, and clocks is that kind. They 's jest got to be humored. Now this 'ere 's a 'mazin' good clock, give me my time on it, and I '11 have it so 't will keep straight on to the Millennium." " Millennium ! " says Aunt Lois, with a snort of infinite contempt. " Yes, the Millennium," says Sam, letting fall his work in a contemplative manner. " That 'ere 's an interestin' topic now. Parson Lothrop, he don't think the Millennium will last a thou- sand years. What 's your 'pinion on that pint, Miss Lois? " " My opinion is," said Aunt Lois, in her most nipping tones, " that if folks don't mind their own business, and do with their might what their hands find to do, the Millennium won't come at all." " Wal, you see, Miss Lois, it 's just here, — SAM LAWSON. 1 01 one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." " I should think you thought a day was a thousand years, the way you work," said Aunt Lois. " Wal," says Sam, sitting down with his back to his desperate litter of wheels, weights, and pendulums, and meditatively caressing his knee as he watched the sailing clouds in abstract meditation, " ye see, ef a thing 's ordained, why it 's got to be, ef you don't lift a finger. That 'ere 's so now, ain't it ? " " Sam Lawson, you are about the most aggra- vating creature I ever had to do with. Here you 've got our clock all to pieces, and have been keeping up a perfect hurrah's nest in our kitchen for three days, and there you sit maun- dering and talking with your back to your work, fussin' about the Millennium, which is none of your business, or mine, as I know of ! Do either put that clock together or let it alone ! " " Don't you be a grain uneasy. Miss Lois. Why, I '11 have your clock all right in the end, but I can't be druv. Wall, I guess I '11 take another spell on 't to-morrow or Friday." Poor Aunt Lois, horror-stricken, but seeing herself actually in the hands of the imperturba- 102 HARRIET BEECH ER STOIVE. ble enemy, now essayed tlic tack of concilia- tion. " Now do, Lawson, just finish up this job, and I '11 pay you down, right on the spot ; and you need the money." " I 'd like to 'blige ye, Miss Lois ; but ye see money ain't every thing in this world. Ef I work tew long on one thing, my mind kind o' gives out, ye see ; and besides, I 've got some 'sponsibilities to 'tend to. There 's Mrs. Cap- tain Brown, she made me promise to come to- day and look at the nose o' that 'ere silver teapot o' hern ; it 's kind o' sprung a leak. And then I 'greed to split a little oven-wood for the Widdah Pedee, that lives up on the Shelburn road. Must visit the widdahs in their afHiction, Scriptur' says. And then there 's Hepsy : she 's allers castin' it up at me that I don't do nothing for her and the chil'en ; but then, lordy massy, Ilcpsy hain't no sort o' pa- tience. Why jest this mornin' I was a tclh'n' her to count up her marcies, and I 'clare for 't if I did n't think she 'd a throwed the tongs at me. That 'ere woman's temper railly makes me consarned. Wal, good-day. Miss Lois. I '11 be along again to-morrow or l-Viday or the first o* next week." And away he went with long, loose strides down the village street, while the SAM LAW SON. IO3 leisurely wail of an old fuguing tune floated back after him, — " Thy years are an Eternal day, Thy years are an Eternal day." " An eternal torment," said Aunt Lois, with a snap. " I 'm sure, if there 's a mortal creature on this earth that I pity, it 's Hepsy Lawson. Folks talk about her scolding, — that Sam Law- son is enough to make the saints in Heaven fall from grace. And you can't do any thing with him : it 's like charging bayonet into a wool- One Saturday afternoon, Tina and I drove over to Needmore with a view to having one more gossip with Sam Lawson. Hepsy, it appears, had departed this life, and Sam had gone over to live with a son of his in Need- more. We found him roosting placidly in the porch on the sunny side of the house. " Why, lordy massy, bless your soul an* body, ef that ain't Horace Holyoke ! " he said, when he recognized who I was. " An' this 'ere 's your wife, is it ? Wal, wal, how this 'ere world does turn round ! Wal, now, who would ha' 104 HARRIET BEECHER STOIVE. thouglit it ? Here you be, and Tiny with you. Wal, wal." " Yes," said I, " here we are." " Wal, now, jest sit down," said Sam, mo- tioning us to a seat in the porch. " I was jest kind o' 'flectin' out here in the sun ; ben a readin' in the ]\Iissionary Herald ; they 've ben a sendin' missionaries to Otawhity, an' they say that there ain't no winter there, an' the bread jest grows on the trees, so 't they don't hev to make none, an' there ain't no wood-piles nor splittin' wood, nor nothin' o' that sort goin' on, an' folks don't need no clothes to speak on. Now, I 's jest thinkin' that 'ere 's jest the country to suit me. I wonder, now, ef they could n't find suthin' for me to do out there. I could shoe the bosses, cf they had any, an' I could teach the natives their catechize, an* kind o' help round gin'ally. These 'ere winters gits so cold here I 'm e'en a'most crooked up with rheumatiz." " Why, Sam," said Tina, " where is Hepsy?" " Law, now, hain't ye heerd ? Why, Ilepsy, she 's been dead, wal, let me see, 't was three year the fourteenth o' last May when Ilepsy died, but she was clear wore out afore she died. Wal, jest half on her was clear paralyzed, poor SAM LAWSON. 105 crittur ; she could n't speak a word ; that 'ere was a gret trial to her, I don't think she was resigned under it. Hepsy hed an awful sight o' grit. I used to talk to Hepsy, an' talk, an' try to set things afore her in the best way I could, so 's to get 'er into a better state o' mind. D' you b'lieve, one day when I 'd ben a talkin' to her, she kind o' made a motion to me with her eye, an' when I went up to 'er, what d' you think ? why, she jest tuk and BIT me ! she did so ! " *'Sam," said Tina, " I sympathize with Hep- sy. I believe if I had to be talked to an hour, and could n't answer, I should bite." — Oldtozvn Folks. HENRY WARD BEECHER. (born, 1813.) DEACON MARBLE. HOW they ever made a deacon out of Jerry Marble I never could imagine ! His was the kindest heart that ever bubbled and ran over. He was elastic, tough, inces- santly active, and a prodigious worker. He seemed never to tire, but after the longest day's toil, he sprang up the moment he had done with work, as if he were a fine steel spring. A few hours' sleep sufficed him, and he saw the morning stars the year round. His weazened face was leather color, but forever dimpling and changing to keep some sort of congruity between itself and his eyes, that winked and blinked, and spilt over with merry good nature. He always seemed afflicted when obliged to be sober. He had been known to laugh in meeting on several occasions, although he ran his face behind his handkerchief, and 106 DEACON MARBLE. \Oj coughed, as if that was the matter, yet nobody- believed it. Once, in a hot summer day, he saw Deacon Trowbridge, a sober and fat man, of great sobriety, gradually ascending from the bodily state into that spiritual condition called sleep. He was blameless of the act. He had struggled against the temptation with the whole virtue of a deacon. He had eaten two or three heads of fennel in vain, and a piece of orange peel. He had stirred himself up, and fixed his eyes on the minister with intense firmness, only to have them grow gradually narrower and milder. If he held his head up firmly, it would with a sudden lapse fall away over backward. If he leaned it a little forward, it would drop suddenly into his bosom. At each nod, recovering himself, he would nod again, with his eyes wide open, to impress upon the boys that he did it on purpose both times. In what other painful event of life has a good man so little sympathy as when overcome with sleep in meeting time ? Against the insidious seduction he arrays every conceivable resist- ance. He stands up awhile ; he pinches him- self, or pricks himself with pins. He looks up helplessly to the pulpit as if some succor might loS IJENRY WARD BEECH ER. come thence. He crosses his legs uncomforta- bly, and attempts to recite catechism, or the multiplication table. He seizes a languid fan, which treacherouily leaves him in a calm. He tries to reason, to notice the phenomena. Oh, that one could carry his pew to bed with him ! What tossing wakefulness there ! what fier}'- chase after somnolency ! In his lawful bed a man cannot sleep, and in his pew he cannot keep awake ! Happy man who does not sleep in church ! Deacon Trowbridge was not that man. Deacon Marble was ! Deacon Marble witnessed the conflict we have sketched above, and when good Mr. Trowbridge gave his next lurch, recovering himself with a snort, and then drew out a red handkerchief and blew his nose with a loud imitation, as if to let the boys know that he had not been asleep, poor Deacon Marble was brought to a sore strait. But, I have reason to think that he would have weathered the stress if it had not been for a sweet-faced little boy in the front of the galler>'. The lad had been innocently watching the same scene, and at its climax laughed out loud, with a frank and musical explosion, and then suddenly disappeared back- ward into his mother's lap. That laugh was just THE DEACON'S TROUT. IO9 too much, and Deacon Marble could no more help laughing than could Deacon Trowbridge help sleeping. Nor could he conceal it. Though he coughed, and put up his handkerchief and hemmed — it ivas a laugh — Deacon ! — and every boy in the house knew it, and liked you better for it — so inexperienced were they. — Norwood. THE deacon's trout. He was a curious trout. I believe he knew Sunday just as well as Deacon Marble did. At any rate, the deacon thought the trout meant to aggravate him. The deacon, you know, is a little waggish. He often tells about that trout. Sez he, " One Sunday morning, just as I got along by the willows, I heard an awful splash, and not ten feet from shore I saw the trout, as long as my arm, just curving over like a bow, and going down with something for breakfast. Gracious ! says I, and I almost jumped out of the wagon. But my wife Polly, says she, ' What on airth are you thinkin' of, Deacon ? It 's Sabbath day, and you 're goin' to meetin' ! It 's a pretty business for a dea- con! ' That sort o' cooled me off. But I do say that, for about a minute, I wished I was n't no HENRY WARD BEECH ER. a deacon. But 't would n't made any difference, for I came down next day to mill on purpose, and I came down once or twice more, and nothin' was to be seen, tho' I tried him with the most temptin' things. Wal, next Sunday I came along agin, and, to save my life I could n't keep off worldly and wanderin' thoughts. I tried to be sayin' my catechism, but I could n't keep my eyes off the pond as we came up to the willows. I 'd got along in the catechism, as smooth as the road, to the Fourth Commandment, and was sayin' it out loud for Polly, and jist as I was sayin': ' What is required in tJic Fourth Commandvicnt ? ' I heard a splash, and there was the trout, and, afore I could think, I said : ' Gracious, Polly, I must have that trout.' She almost riz right up, ' I knew you wan't sayin' your catechism hearty. Is this the way you answer the ques- tion about kecpin' the Lord's day? I 'm ashamed. Deacon Marble,' says she. ' You 'd better change your road, and go to mcetin' on the road over the hill. If I was a deacon, I would n't let a fish's tail whisk the whole catechism out of my head ' ; and I had to go to mectin' on tho hill road all the rest of the summer.' ' — Norxvood. THE DOG NOBLE. HI THE DOG NOBLE, AND THE EMPTY HOLE. The first summer which we spent in Lenox, we had along a very inteUigent dog, named Noble. He was learned in many things, and by his dog-lore excited the undying admiration of all the children. But there were some things which Noble could never learn. Having on one occasion seen a red squirrel run into a hole in a stone wall, he could not be persuaded that he was not there forevermore. Several red squirrels lived close to the house, and had become familiar, but not tame. They kept up a regular romp with Noble. They would come down from the maple trees with provoking coolness ; they would run along the fence almost within reach ; they would cock their tails and sail across the road to the barn ; and yet there was such a well-timed calculation under all this apparant rashness, that Noble in- variably arrived at the critical spot just as the squirrel left it. On one occasion Noble was so close upon his red-backed friend that, unable to get up the maple-tree, he dodged into a hole in the wall, ran through the chinks, emerged at a little dis- tance and sprung into the tree. The intense enthusiasm of the dog at that hole can hardly 112 HENRY WARD BEECHER. be described. Ho filled it full of barkin<^. He pawed and scratched as if undermining a bas- tion. Standing off at a little distance, he would pierce the hole with a gaze as intense and fixed as if he were trying magnetism on it. Then, with tail extended, and, every hair thereon electrified, he would rush at the empty hole with a prodigious onslaught. This imaginary squirrel haunted Noble night and day. The very squirrel himself would run up before his face into the tree, and, crouched in a crotch, would sit silently watching the whole process of bombarding the empty hole, with great sobriety and relish. But Noble would allow of no doubts. His conviction that that hole had a squirrel in it continued unshaken for six weeks. When all other occupations failed, this hole remained to him. When there were no more chickens to harry, no pigs to bite, no cattle to chase, no children to romp with, no ex- peditions to make with the grown folks, and when he had slept all that his dogskin would hold, he would walk out of the yard, yawn and stretch himself, and then look wistfully at the hole, as if thinking to himself, "Well, as there is nothing else to do, I may as well try that hole again ! " — Eyes and Ears. APPLE-PIE. 113 APPLE-PIE. How often people use language without the slightest sense of its deep, interior meaning ! Thus, no phrase is more carelessly or frequently- used than the saying, "Apple-pie order ^ How few who say so reflect at the time upon either apple-pie or the true order of apple-pie ! Per- haps they have been reared without instruction. They may have been born in families that were ignorant of apple-pie ; or who were left to the guilt of calling two tough pieces of half-cooked dough, with a thin streak of macerated dried apple between them, of leather color, and of taste and texture not unbecoming the same, — an apple-pie ! But from such profound degra- dation of ideas we turn away with gratitude and humility, that one so unworthy as we should have been reared to better thinsrs. We are also affected with a sense of regret for duty unperformed ; for great as have been the benefits received, we have never yet cele- brated as we ought the merits of apple-pie. That reflection shall no longer cast its shadow upon us. " Henry, go down cellar, and bring me up some Spitzenbergs." The cellar was as large as the whole house, and the house was broad 114 HENRY IVARD BEECHER. as a small pyramid. The north side was \\\\\- dowlcss, and banked up outside with frost- defying tan-bark. The south side had win- dows, festooned and frescoed with the webs of spiders, that wove their tapestries over every corner in the neighborhood, and, when no flies were to be had, ate up each other, as if they were nothing but poUticians, instead of being lawful and honorable arachnidcs. On the east side stood a row of cider-barrels ; for twelve or twent/ barrels of cider were a fit provision for the year, — and what was not consumed for drink was expected duly to turn into vinegar, and was then exalted to certain hogsheads kept for the purpose. But along the middle of the cellar were the apple-bins ; and when the sea- son had been propitious, there were stores and heaps of Russets, Greenings, Seeknofurthcrs, Pearmains, Gilliflowers, Spitzenbergs and many besides, nameless, but not virtueless. Thence selecting, we duly brought up the apples. Some people think any thing will do for pies. But the best for eating are the best for cooking. Who would make jelly of any other apple, that had the Porter ? who would bake or roast any other sweet apple, that had the Ladies Sweet- ing, — unless, perhaps, the Tabnan Sweet? and APPLE-PIE. 115 who would put into a pie any apple but Spits- enberg, that had that ? Off with their jackets ! Fill the great wooden bowl with the sound rogues ! And now, O cook ! which shall it be ? For at this point the roads diverge, and though they all come back at length to apple- pie, it is not a matter of indifference which you choose. There is, for example, one made without under-crust, in a deep plate, and the apples laid in, in full quarters ; or the apples being stewed are beaten to a mush, and sea- soned, and put between the double paste ; or they are sliced thin and cooked entirely within the covers ; or they are put without seasoning into their bed, and when baked, the upper lid is raised, and the butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, and sugar are added ; the whole well mixed, and the crust returned as if nothing had happened. But O be careful of the paste ! Let it not be like putty, nor rush to the other extreme, and make it so flaky that one holds his breath while eating for fear of blowing it all away. Let it not be plain as bread, nor yet rich like cake. Aim at that glorious medium, in which it is tender without being fugaciously flaky; short, without being too short ; a mild, sapid, brittle thing, that lies upon the tongue, so as Il6 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. to let the apple strike through and touch the papilla with a mere effluent flavor. But this, like all high art, must be a thing of inspiration or instinct. A true cook will understand us, and we care not if others do not ! Do not suppose that we limit the apple-pie to the kinds and methods enumerated. Its capacity in variation is endless, and every di- versity discovers some new charm or flavor. It will accept almost every flavor of every spice. And yet nothing is so fatal to the rare and higher graces of apple-pie as inconsiderate, vulgar spicing. It is not meant to be a mere vehicle for the exhibition of these spices, in their own natures. It is a glorious unity in which sugar gives up its nature as sugar, and butter ceases to be butter, and each flavorsome spice gladly evanishes from its own full nature, that all of them, by a common death, may rise into the new life of apple-pie ! Not that apple is longer apple ! //, too, is transformed. And the final pie, though born of apple, sugar, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, lemon, is like none of these, but the compound ideal of them all, refined, purified, and by fire fixed in blissful perfection. But all exquisite creations are short-lived. APPLE-PIE. 117 The natural term of an apple-pie is but twelve hours. It reaches its highest state about one hour after it comes from the oven, and just before its natural heat has quite departed. But every hour afterward is a declension. And after it is one day old, it is thenceforward but the ghastly corpse of apple-pie. But while it is yet florescent, white, or creamy yellow, with the merest drip of candied juice along the edges (as if the flavor were so good to itself that its own lips watered !) of a mild and modest warmth, the sugar suggesting jelly, yet not jellied, the morsels of apple neither dissolved nor yet in original substance, but hanging as it were in a trance between the spirit and the flesh of applehood, then, when dinner is to be served at five o'clock, and you are pivotted on the hour of one with a ravening appetite, let the good dame bring forth for luncheon an apple-pie, with cheese a year old, crumbling and yet moist, but not with base fluid, but oily rather ; then, O blessed man, favored by all the divinities ! eat, give thanks, and go forth, " in apple-pie order ! " — Eyes and Ears. JOSEPH G. BALDWIN. (born 1815 — DIED 1864.) OVID BOLUS, ESQ., ATTORNKY AT LAW AND SOLICITOR IN CHANCERY. A Fragment. ***** AND wliat history of that halcyon period, ranging from the year of Grace 1835 to 1837; that golden era, when shin-plasters were the sole currency ; when bank-bills were " Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks In Vallomhrosa," and credit was a franchise ; — what history of those times would be complete, that left out the name of Ovid Bolus ? As well write the biography of Prince Hal, and forbear all men- tion of Falstaff. In law phrase, the thing would be a "deed without a name," and void ; a most unpardonable casus omissus. I cannot trace, for reasons the sequel sug- 118 OVID BOLUS, ESQ. II9 gests, the early history, much less the birth- place, pedigree, and juvenile associations of this worthy. Whence he or his forbears got his name or how, I don't know ; but for the fact that it is to be inferred he got it in infancy, I should have thought he borrowed it ; he bor- rowed every thing else he ever had, such things as he got under the credit system only ex- cepted ; in deference, however, to the axiom, that there is some exception to all general rules, I am willing to believe that he got this much honestly, by bona-fide gift or inheritance, and without false pretence. I have had a hard time of it in endeavoring to assign to Bolus his leading vice ; I have given up the task in despair; but I have es- sayed to designate that one which gave him, in the end, most celebrity. I am aware that it is invidious to make comparisons, and to give pre- eminence to one over other rival qualities and gifts, where all have high claims to distinction ; but, then, the stern justice of criticism, in this case, requires a discrimination which, to be in- telligible and definite, must be relative and comparative. I, therefore, take the responsi- bility of saying, after due reflection, that in my opinion, Bolus's reputation stood higher for 120 JOSEPH C. BALDWIN. lying than for anything else; and in thus as- signing pre-eminence to this poetic property, I do it without any desire to derogate from other brilliant characteristics belonging to the same general category, which have drawn the won- dering notice of the world. Some men are liars from interest ; not be- cause they have no regard for truth, but because they have less regard for it than for gain ; some are liars from vanity, because they would rather be well thought of by others, than have reason for thinking well of themselves ; some are liars from a sort of necessity, which overbears, by the weight of temptation, the sense of virtue; some are enticed away by the allurements of pleasure, or seduced by evil example and edu- cation. Bolus was none of these ; he belonged to a higher department of the fine arts, and to a higher class of professors of this sort of Belles- Lettres. Bolus was a natural liar, just as some horses are natural pacers, and some dogs natu- ral setters. What he did in that walk, was from the irresistible promptings of instinct, and a disinterested love of art. His genius and his performances were free from the vulgar alloy of interest or temptation. Accordingly, he did not labor a lie ; he lied with a relish ; he lied with OVID BOLUS, ESQ. 121 a coming appetite, growing with what it fed on ; he lied from the dehght of invention and the charm of fictitious narrative. It is true he apphed his art to the practical purposes of life ; but in so far did he glory the more in it ; just as an ingenious machinist rejoices that his in- vention, while it has honored science, has also supplied a common want. Bolus's genius for lying was encyclopediacal ; it was what German criticism calls many-sided. It embraced all subjects without distinction or partiality. It was equally good upon all, " from grave to gay, from lively to severe." Bolus's lying came from his greatness of soul and his comprehensiveness of mind. The truth was too small for him. Fact was too dry and common-place for the fervor of his genius. Besides, great as was his memory — for he even remembered the outlines of his chief lies — his invention was still larger. He had a great con- tempt for history and historians. He thought them tame and timid cobblers ; mere tinkers on other people's wares, — simple parrots and magpies of other men's sayings or doings ; bor- rowers of and acknowledged debtors for others' chattels, got without skill ; they had no sepa- rate estate in their ideas ; they were bailees of 122 JOSEPH G. BALDIVIN. goods, which they did not pretend to hold by adverse title ; buriers of talents in napkins making no usury; barren and unprofitable non- producers in the intellectual vineyard — nati consuincre fritgcs. He adopted a fact occasionally to start with, but, like a Shefifield razor and the crude ore, the workmanship, polish, and value were all his own ; a Thibet shawl could as well be credited to the insensate goat that grew the wool, as the author of a fact Bolus honored with his ar- tistical skill, could claim to be the inventor of the &tory. His experiments upon credulity, like charity, began at home. He had long torn down the partition wall between his imagination and his memorj\ He had long ceased to distinguish between the impressions made upon his mind by what c^xxno. froui it, and what came to it ; all ideas were facts to him. Bolus's life was not a common man's life. His world was not the hard, work-day world the groundlings live in ; he moved in a sphere of poetry ; he lived amidst the ideal and ro- mantic. Not that he was not practical enough, when he chose to be ; by no means. He bought goods and chattels, lands and tene- OVID BOLUS, ESQ. 1 23 merits, like other men ; but he got them under a state of poetic illusion, and paid for them in an imaginary way. Even the titles he gave were not of the earthy sort — they were some- times clouded. He gave notes, too, — how well I know it ! — like other men ; he paid them like himself. How well he asserted the Spiritual over the Material ! How he delighted to turn an ab- stract idea into concrete cash — to make a few blots of ink, representing a little thought, turn out a labor-saving machine, and bring into his pocket money which many days of hard ex- hausting labor would not procure ! What pious joy it gave him to see the days of the good Samaritan return, and the hard hand of avarice relax its grasp on land and negroes, pork and clothes, beneath the soft speeches and kind promises of future rewards — blending in the act the three cardinal virtues. Faith, Hope, and Charity ; while, in the result, the chief of these three was Charity I There was something sublime in the idea — this elevating the spirit of man to its true and primeval dominion over things of sense and grosser matter. It is true, that in these practical romances, 124 JOSEPH G. BALDWIN. Bolus was charged with a defective taste in re- peating himself. The justice of the charge must be, at least, partially acknowledged ; this I know from a client, to whom Ovid sold a tract of land after having sold it twice before : I cannot say, though, that his forgetting to mention this circumstance made any difference, for Bolus originally had no title. There was nothing narrow, sectarian, or sec- tional in Bolus's lying. It was on the contrary broad and catholic. It had no respect to times or places. It was as wide and illimitable as elastic, and variable as the air he spent in giv- ing it expression. It was a generous, gentle- manly, whole-souled faculty. It was often employed on occasions of thrift ; but no more, and no more zealously on these than on others of no profit to himself. He was an Egotist, but a magnificent one ; he was not a liar be- cause an egotist, but an egotist because a liar. He usually made himself the hero of the ro- mantic exploits and adventures he narrated ; but this was not so much to exalt himself, as because it was more convenient to his art. He had nothing malignant or invidious in his nature. If he exalted himself, it was sel- dom or never to the disparagement of others, OVID BOLUS, ESQ. 1 25 unless, indeed, those others were merely im- aginary persons, or too far off to be hurt. He would as soon lie for you as for himself. It was all the same, so there was something doing in his line of business, except in those cases in which his necessities required to be fed at your expense. He did not confine himself to mere lingual lying : one tongue was not enough for all the business he had on hand. He acted lies as well. Indeed, sometimes his very silence was a lie. He made nonentity fib for him, and per- formed wondrous feats by a " masterly inac- tivity." Th.Q personnel oi this distinguished Votary of the Muse was happily fitted to his art. He was strikingly handsome. There was some- thing in his air and bearing almost princely, certainly quite distinguished. His manners were winning, his address frank, cordial, and flowing. He was built after the model and structure of Bolingbroke in his youth, American- ized and Hoosierized a little by " raising in," and an adaptation to, the Backwoods. He was fluent but choice of diction, a little sonorous in the structure of his sentences to give effect to a voice like an organ. His countenance was 126 JOSEPH G. BALDWIN. open and engaging, usually sedate of expres- sion, but capable of any modifications at the shortest notice. Add to this his intelligence, shrewdness, tact, humor, and that he was a ready debater and elegant dcclaimcr, and had the gift of bringing out, to the fullest extent, his resources, and you may see that Ovid, in a new country, was a man apt to make no mean impression. He drew the loose population around him, as the magnet draws iron filings. He was a man for the " boys," — then a numer- ous and influential class. His generous profu- sion and free-handed manner impressed them as the bounty of Caesar the loafing commonalty of Rome : Bolus was no niggard. He never higgled or chaffered about small things. He was as free with his own money — if he ever had any of his own — as with yours. If he never paid borrowed money, he never asked payment of others. If you wished him to lend you any, he would give you a handful without counting it : if you handed him any, you were losing time in counting it, for you never saw any thing of it again ; Shallow's funded debt on Falstaff were as safe an investment : this would have been an equal commerce, but, unfortu- nately for Bolus's friends, the proportion be- OVID BOLUS, ESQ. 12/ tween his disbursements and receipts was something scant. Such a spendthrift never made a track even in the flush times of 1836. It took as much to support him as a first-class steamboat. His bills at the groceries were as long as John Q. Adams's Abolition Petition, or, if pasted together, would have matched the great Chartist memorial. He would as soon treat a regiment or charter the grocery for the day, as any other way ; and after the crowd had heartily drank — some of them " laying their souls in soak," — if he did not have the money convenient — as when did he ? — he would fumble in his pocket, mutter something about nothing less than a $100 bill, and direct the score, with a lordly familiarity, to be charged to his ac- count. Ovid had early possessed the faculty of ubiquity. He had been born in more places than Homer. In an hour's discourse, //^ would, with more than the speed of Ariel, travel at every point of the compass, from Portland to San Antonio, some famous adventure always occurring just as he " rounded to," or while stationary, though he did not remain longer than to see it. He was present at every im- portant debate in the Senate at Washington, 128 JOSEPH G. BALD IV IN. and had heard every popuhir speaker on the hustings, at the bar, and in the pulpit, in the United States. He had been concerned in many important causes with Grymes and against Mazereau in New Orleans, and had borne no small share in the fierce forensic battles, which, with singular luck, he and Gr>'mes always won in the courts of the Cres- cent City. And such frolics as they had when they laid aside their heavy armor, after the heat and burden of the day! Such gambling! A negro a7ite and twenty on the call, was moderate playing. What lots of " Ethiopian captives " and other plunder /ir raked down vexed Arithmetic to count and credulity to believe ; and, had it not been for Bolus's generosity in giving " tiie boys" a chance to win back by doubling off on tJie JiigJi hand, there is no knowing what changes of owners would not have occurred in the Rapides or on the German coast. The Florida war and tlic Texas revolution, had each furnished a brilliant theatre for Ovid's chivalrous emprise. Jack Hays and he were great chums. Jack and he had many a hearty laugh over tlie odd trick of Ovid, in lassoing a Camanche chief, while galloping a stolen OVID BOLUS, ESQ. 1 29 horse bare-backed, up the San Saba hills. But he had the rig on Jack again, when he made him charge on a brood of about twenty Ca- manches, who had got into a mote of timber in the prairies, and were shooting their arrows from the covert, while Ovid, with a six-bar- relled rifle, was taking them on the wing as Jack rode in and flushed them ! It was an affecting story and feelingly told, that of his and Jim Bowie's rescuing an Am- erican girl from the Apaches, and returning her to her parents in St. Louis ; and it would have been still more tender, had it not been for the unfortunate necessity Bolus was un- der of shooting a brace of gay lieutenants on the border, one frosty morning, before breakfast, back of the fort, for taking unbecoming liberties with the fair damosel, the spoil of his bow and spear. But the girls Ovid courted, and the miraculous adventures he had met with in love, beggared, by the comparison, all the fortune of war had done for him. Old Nugent's daughter, Sallie, was his narrowest escape. Sallie was accom- plished to the romantic extent of two ocean steamers, and four blocks of buildings in Bos- ton, separated only from immediate " percep- 130 JOSEPH G. BALDWIN. tion and pernancy," by the contingency of old Nugcnt's recovering from a confirmed dropsy, for which he had twice been ineffectually tapped. The day was set — the presents made — superb of course — the guests invited : the old Sea Cap- tain insisted on Bolus's setting his negroes free, and taking five thousand dollars apiece for the loss. Bolus's love for the ** peculiar institu- tion " would n't stand it. Rather than submit to such degradation, Ovid broke off the match, and left Sallic broken-hearted ; a disease from which she did not recover until about six months afterwards, when she ran off with the mate of her father's ship, the Sea Serpent, in the Rio trade. Gossip and personal anecdote were the espe- cial subjects of Ovid's elocution. lie was in- timate with all the notabilities of the political circles. Me was a privileged visitor of the po- litical green-room. He was admitted back into the laboratory where the political thunder was manufactured, and into the office where the magnetic wires were worked. lie knew the origin of every party question and movement, and had a finger in every pie the party cooks of Tammany baked for the body politic. One thing in Ovid I can never forgive. This OVJD BOLUS, ESQ. 13I was his coming it over poor Ben. I don't ob- ject to it on the score of the swindle. That was to have been expected. But swindHng Ben was degrading the dignity of the art. True, it illustrated the universality of his sci- ence, but it lowered it to a beggarly process of mean deception. There was no skill in it. It was little better than crude larceny. A child could have done it ; it had as well been done to a child. It was like catching a cow with a lariat, or setting a steel trap for a pet pig. True, Bolus had nearly practised out of cus- tom. He had worn his art threadbare. Men, who could afford to be cheated, had all been worked up or been scared away. Besides, Frost could n't be put off. He talked of money in a most ominous connection with blood. The thing could be settled by a bill of exchange. Ben's name was unfortunately good — the amount some $1,600. Ben had a fine tract of land in S r. He has not got it now. Bolus only gave Ben one wrench — that was enough. Ben never breathed easy afterwards. All the V's and X's of ten years' hard practice, went in that penful of ink. Fie ! Bolus, Mon- roe Edwards would n't have done that. He would sooner have sunk down to the level of JOSEPH G. BALDWIN. some honest calling for a living, than have put his profession to so mean a shift. I can con- ceive of but one extenuation : Bolus was on the lift for Texas, and the desire was natural to qualify himself for citizenship. The genius of Bolus, strong in its unassisted strength, yet gleamed out more brilliantly under the genial influence of " the rosy." With boon companions and " reaming swats," it was worth while to hear him of a winter evening. He could "clothe the palpable and the familiar with golden exhalations of the dawn." The most common-place objects became dignified. There was a history to the commonest articles about him ; that book was given him by Mr. Van Buren — the walking stick was a present from Gen. Jackson; the thrice-watered Monon- gahela, just drawn from the grocery hard by, was the last of a distillation of 1825, smuggled in from Ireland, and presented to him by a friend in New Orleans, on easy terms with the collector ; the cigars, not too fragrant, were of a bo-x sent him by a schoolmate from Cuba, in 1834 — before he visited the Island. And talk- ing of Cuba — he had met with an adventure there, the impression of which never could be effaced from his mind. He had gone, at the OVID BOLUS, ESQ. I 33 instance of Don Carlos y Cubanos, (an intimate classmate in a Kentucky Catholic College,) whose life he had saved from a mob in Louis- ville, at the imminent risk of his own. The Don had a sister of blooming sixteen, the least of whose charms was two or three coffee plantations, some hundreds of slaves, and a suitable garnish of doubloons, accumulated during her minority, in the hands of her uncle and guardian, the Captain-General. All went well with the young lovers — for such, of course, they were — until Bolus,with his usual frank indis- cretion, in a conversation with the Priest avowed himself a Protestant. Then came trouble. Every effort was made to convert him ; but Bolus's faith resisted the eloquent tongue of the Priest, and the more eloquent eyes of Donna Isabella. The brother pleaded the old friend- ship — urged a seeming and formal conformity — the Captain-General argued the case like a politician — the Sefiorita like a warm and devoted woman. All would not do. The Captain-Gen- eral forbade his longer sojourn on the Island. Bolus took leave of the fair Sefiorita ; the part- ing interview, held in the orange bower, was affecting ; Donna Isabella, with dishevelled hair, threw herself at his feet ; the tears 134 JOSEPH G. BALDWIN. Streamed from her eyes ; in liquid tones, broken by grief, she implored him to relent, reminded him of her love, of her trust in him. " Gentle- men," Bolus continued, " I confess to the weakness — I wavered — but then my eyes hap- pened to fall on the breast-pin with a lock of my mother's hair — I recovered my courage ; I shook her gently from me. I felt my last hold on earth was loosened — my last hope of peace destroyed. Since that hour, my life has been a burden. Yes, gentlemen, you see before you a broken-hearted man — a martyr to his Religion. But, away with these melancholy thoughts ! boys, pass around the jorum." And wiping his eyes, he drowned the wasting sorrow in a long draught of the poteen ; and, being much re- freshed, was able to carry the burden on a little further, — videlicet, to the next lie. It must not be supposed that Bolus was des- titute of the tame virtue of prudence — or that this was confined to the avoidance of the im- provident habit of squandering his money in paying old debts. He took reasonably good care of his person. He avoided all unnecessary exposures, chiefly from a patriotic desire, prob- ably, of continuing his good offices to his coun- try. Mis recklessness was, for the most part, OVID BOLUS, ESQ. 1 35 lingual. To hear him talk, one might suppose he held his carcass merely for a target to try guns and knives upon ; or that the business of his life was to draw men up to ten paces or less, for sheer improvement in marksmanship. Such exploits as he had gone through with, dwarfed the heroes of romance to very pigmy and sneak- ing proportions. Pistol at the Bridge, when he bluffed at honest Fluellen, might have envied the swash-buckler airs Ovid would sometimes put on. But I never could exactly identify the place he had laid out for his burying-ground. Indeed, I had occasion to know that he de- clined to understand several not very ambigu- ous hints, upon which he might, with as good a grace as Othello, have spoken, not to mention one or two pressing invitations which his mod- esty led him to refuse. I do not know that the base sense of fear had any thing to do with these declinations ; possibly he might have thought he had done his share of fighting, and did not wish to monopolize ; or his principles forbade it — I mean those which opposed his paying a debt ; knowing he could not cheat that inexorable creditor, Death, of his claim, he did the next thing to it ; which was to delay and shirk payment as long as possible. 136 JOSEPH G. BALDWIN. It remains to add a word of criticism on this great Lyx\z artist. In lying, Bolus was not only a successful, but he was a very able practitioner. Like every other eminent artist, he brought all his faculties to bear upon his art. Though quick of percep- tion and prompt of invention, he did not trust himself to the inspirations of his genius for im- provising a lie, when he could well premeditate one. He deliberately built up the substantial masonry, relying upon the occasion and its accessories, chiefly for embellishment and col- lateral supports ; as Burke excogitated the more solid parts of his great speeches, and left unprepared only the illustrations and fancy- work. Bolus's manner was, like every truly great man's, his own. It was excellent. He did not come blushing up to a lie, as some otherwise very passable liars do, as if he were making a mean compromise between his guilty passion or morbid vanity, and a struggling conscience. Bolus had long since settled all disputes with his conscience. He and it were on very good terms — at least, if there was no affection be- tween the couple, there was no fuss in the family; or, if there were any scenes or angry OVID BOLUS, ESQ. 1 37 passages, they were reserved for strict privacy and never got out. My own opinion is, that he was as destitute of the article as an ostrich. Thus he came to his work bravely, cheerfully, and composedly. The delights of composition, invention, and narration, did not fluster his style or agitate his delivery. He knew how, in the tumult of passion, to assume the ** temper- ance to give it smoothness." A lie never ran away with him, as it is apt to do with young performers ; he could always manage and guide it ; and to have seen him fairly mounted, would have given you some idea of the polished ele- gance of D'Orsay, and the superb manage of Murat. There is a tone and manner of narra- tion different from those used in delivering ideas just conceived ; just as there is a difference be- tween the sound of the voice in reading and in speaking. Bolus knew this, and practised on it. When he was narrating, he put the facts in order, and seemed to speak them out of his memory ; but not formally, or as if by rote. He would stop himself to correct a date ; recol- lect he was wrong — he was that year at the White Sulphur or Saratoga, etc.; having got the date right, the names of persons present would be incorrect, etc.; and these he corrected in 138 JOSEPH G. BALDWIN. turn. A stranger hearing him, would have feared the marring of a good story by too fas- tidious a conscientiousness in the narrator. His zeal in pursuit of a lie under difficulties was remarkable. The society around him — if such it could be called — was hardly fitted, with- out some previous preparation, for an immedi- ate introduction to Almack's or the classic precincts of Gore Plouse. The manners of the natives were rather plain than ornate, and can- dor rather than polish predominated in their conversation. Bolus had need of some forbear- ance to withstand the interruptions and cross- examinations with which his revelations were sometimes received. But he possessed this in a remarkable degree. I recollect, on one occasion, when he was giving an account of a providen- tial escape he was signally favored with, (when boarded by a pirate off the Isle of Pines, and he pleaded mason r}', and gave a sign he had got out of the Disclosures of Morgan,) Tom John- son interrupted him to say that he had heard that before (which was more than Bolus had ever done). B. immediately rejoined that he had, he believed, given him, Tom, a running sketch of the incident. " Rather," said Tom, " I think a /j'/;/o- sketch." Bolus scarcely smiled OVID BOLUS, ESQ. 1 39 as he replied that Tom was a wag, and could n't help turning the most serious things into jests; and went on with his usual brilliancy to finish the narrative. Bolus did not overcrowd his can- vas. His figures were never confused, and the subordinates and accessories did not withdraw attention from the main and substantive lie. He never squandered his lies profusely ; think- ing, with the poet, that " bounteous, not prodi- gal, is kind Nature's hand," he kept the golden mean between penuriousness and prodigality; never stingy of his lies, he was not wasteful of them, but was rather forehanded than pushed or embarrassed, having, usually, fictitious stock to be freshly put on 'change when he wished to " make a raise." In most of his fables he incul- cated but a single leading idea, but contrived to make the several facts of the narrative fall in very gracefully with the principal scheme. The rock on which many promising young liars, who might otherwise have risen to merited distinction, have split, is vanity; this marplot vice betrays itself in the exultation manifested on the occasion of a decided hit, an exultation too inordinate for mere recital, and which betrays authorship ; and to betray author- ship, in the present barbaric moral and intellec- I40 JOSEPH G. BALDWIN. tual condition of the world, is fatal. True, there seems to be some inconsistency here. Dickens and Bulwer can do as much lying, for money, too, as they choose and no one blame them any more than they would blame a lawyer regular- ly fcedio do it ; but let any man, gifted with the same genius, try his hand at it, not delib- erately, and in writing, but merely orally, and ugly names are given him, and he is proscribed. Bolus heroically suppressed exultation over the victories his lies achieved, Alas! for the beautiful things of earth, its flowers, its sunsets — its lovely girls — its lies — brief and fleeting arc their date. Lying is a very delicate accomplishment. It must be ten- derly cared for and jealously guarded. It must not be overvvorked. Bolus forgot this salutary caution. The people found out his art. How- ever dull the commons are as to other mat- ters, they get sharp enough after a while to whatever concerns their bread and butter. Bolus, not having confined his art to political matters, sounded at last the depths and explored the limits of popular credulity. The denizens of this degenerate age had not the disinterested- ness of Prince Hal, who " cared not how many fed at his cost"; they got tired at last of OVID BOLUS, ESQ. I4I promises to pay. The credit system, common before as pump water, adhering like the elective franchise to every voter, began to take the worldly wisdom of Falstaff's mercer, and ask security, and security liked something more substantial than plausible promises. In this forlorn condition of the country, returning to its savage state, and abandoning the refine- ments of a ripe Anglo-Saxon civilization for the sordid safety of Mexican or Chinese modes of traffic ; deserting the sweet simplicity of its ancient trustingness and the poetic illusions of Augustus .Tomlinson for the vulgar saws of poor Richard — Bolus, with a sigh like that breathed out by his great prototype after his apostrophe to London, gathered up, one bright moonlight night, his articles of value, shook the dust from his feet, and departed from a land unworthy of his longer sojourn. With that delicate consideration for the feelings of his friends, which, like the politeness of Charles II., never forsook him, he spared them the pain of a parting interview. He left no greetings of kindness, no messages of love, nor did he ask assurances of their Hvely remembrance. It was quite unnecessary. In every house he had left an autograph, in every ledger a souvenir. 142 JOSEPH G. BALDWIN. They will never forget him. Their connection with him will be ever regarded as ' ' The greenest spot In nienior)''s waste." Poor Ben, whom he had honored with the last marks of his confidence, can scarcely speak of him to this day, without tears in his eyes. Far away towards the setting sun he hied him, until, at last, with a hermit's disgust at the deg- radation of the world, like Ignatius turned monk, he pitched his tabernacle amidst the smiling prairies that sleep in vernal beauty, in the shadow of the San Saba mountains. There let his mighty genius rest. It has earned repose. We leave Themistocles to his volun- tary exile. — TJie Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi. FREDERICK WILLIAM SHELTON. (born 1815 — DIED 188I.) INCIDENTS IN A RETIRED LIFE. LAST year I had a solitary peach upon a soHtary tree, for the early frost frustra- ted the delicious crop. This only one, which, from its golden color, might be entitled El Dorado, I watched with fear and trembling from day to day, patiently waiting for the iden- tical time when I should buoy it up carefully in my hand, that its pulp should not be bruised, tear off its thin peel, admonished that the time had come by a gradual releasing of the fruit from its adhesion to the stem, and I appointed the next day for the ceremonial of plucking. The morrow dawned, as bright a day as ever dawned upon the earth, and on a near approach I found it still there, and said, with chuckling gratification," There is some delicacy in thieves." Alas ! on reaching it, somebody had taken a large bite out of the ripest cheek, but with a sac- 143 144 FREDERICK WILLIAM SHELTOX. rilegious witticism had left it sticking to the stem. The detestable prints of the teeth which bit it were still in it, and a wasp was gloating at its core. Had he taken the whole peach, I should have vented my feelings in a violence of indignation unsuited to a balmy garden. But as he was joker enough to bite only its sunny side, I must forgive him, as one who has some element of salvation in his character, be- cause he is disposed to look at the bright side of things. What is a peach } A mere globe of succulent and delicious pulp, which I would rather be deprived of than cultivate bad feelings, even towards thieves. Wherever you find rogues whose deeds involve a saline element of wit, make up your mind that they are no rogues. — Up the River. This morning the Shanghai hen laid another egg, of a rich brunette complexion, which we took away, and replaced by a common vulgar egg, intending to reserve the Shanghai's in a cool place until the time of incubation. Very much amused was I witli the sequel. The proud and haughty superiority of the breed manifested itself by detecting the cheat and resenting the insult. Shang and Eng flew at the supposititious egg with the utmost indigna- INCIDENTS IN A RETIRED LITE. 1 45 tion and picked it to pieces, scratching the rem- nants of the shell from the nest. . . . There is one peculiarity of these fowls which deserves to be mentioned. When I removed mine from the basket, I thought that the worthy donor had clipped their wings to prevent them from flying away, or scaling the hennery. On farther knowledge I have learned that their style and fashion is that of the jacket-sleeve and bob-tail coat. Their eminent domesticity is clearly sig- nified by this, because they cannot get over an ordinary fence, and would not if they could. It is because they have no disposition to do this, that Nature has cropt them of their super- fluous wings, and given them a plumage suit- able to their desires. " Their sober wishes never learn to stray." They often come into the kitchen, but never go abroad to associate with common fowls, but remain at home in dignified retirement. Another thing remarkable and quite renowned about this breed is, the Oriental courtesy and politeness of the cock. If you throw a piece of bread, he waits till the hen helps herself first, and often carries it to her in his own beak. The feathered people in the East, and those not feathered, are far superior to ours ip those elaborate and delightful forms 146 FREDERICK WILLIAM SI I ELTON. of manner which add a charm and zest to life. This has been from the days of Abraham until now. There are no common people in these realms. All are polite, and the very roosters illustrate the best principles laid down in any book of etiquette. Book of Etiquette ! What is conventionalism without the in-born sense ? Can any man or beast be taught to be mechani- cally polite ? Not at all : not at all ! . . . I have received a present of a pair of Cochin- Chinas, a superb cock and a dun-colored hen. I put them with my other fowls in the cellar, to protect them for a short time from the severity of the weather. My Shanghai rooster had for several nights been housed up ; for on one occa- sion, when the cold was snapping, he was dis- covered under the lee of a stone wall, standing on one leg, taking no notice of the approach of any one, and nearly gone. When brought in, he backed up against the red-hot kitchen- stove, and burnt his tail off. Before this he had no feathers in the rear to speak of, and now he is bob-tailed indeed. Anne sewed upon him a jacket of carpet, and put him in a tea-box for the night ; and it was ludicrous on the next morning to sec him lifting up his head above the square prison-box, and crowing lustily to INCIDENTS IN A RETIRED LIFE. 1 47 greet the day. But before breakfast-time he had a dreadful fit. He retreated against the wall, he fell upon his side, he kicked, and he "carried on"; but when the carpet was taken off, he came to himself, and ate corn with a vora- cious appetite. His indisposition was, no doubt, occasioned by a rush of blood to the head from the tightness of the bandages. When Shanghai and Cochin met together in the cellar, they enacted in that dusky hole all the barbarities of a profane cockpit. I heard a sound as if from the tumbling of barrels, followed by a dull, thumping noise, like spirit-rappings, and went below, where the first object which met my eye was a mouse creeping along the beam out of an excavation in my pine-apple cheese. As for the fowls, instead of salutation after the re- spectful manner of their country — which is expressed thus : Shang knocks knees to Cochin, bows three times, touches the ground, and makes obeisance — they were engaged in a bloody fight, unworthy of celestial poultry. With their heads down, eyes flashing, and red as vipers, and with a feathery frill or ruffle about their necks, they were leaping at each other, to see who should hold dominion over the ash-heap. It put me exactly in mind of 148 FREDERICK WILLIAM SH ELTON. two Scythians or two Greeks in America, where each wished to be considered the only Scythian or only Greek in the country. A contest or emulation is at all times highly animating and full of zest, whether two scholars write, two athletes strive, two boilers strain, or two cocks fight. Every lazy dog in the vicinity is immediately at hand. I looked on until I saw the Shanghai's peepers darkened, and his comb streaming with blood. These birds contended for some days after for pre-eminence, on the lawn, and no flinching could be observed on either part, although the Shanghai was by one- third the smaller of the two. At last the latter was thoroughly mortified ; his eyes wavered and wandered vaguely, as he stood opposite the foe ; he turned tail and ran. From that moment he became the veriest coward, and submitted to every indignity without attempting to resist. He suffered himself to be chased about the lawn, fled from the Indian meal, and was almost starved. Such submission on his part at last resulted in peace, and the two rivals walked side by side without fighting, and ate together, with a mutual concession, of the corn. This, in turn, engendered a degree of presumption on the part of the Shanghai cock; and one INCIDENTS IN A RETIRED LIFE. 1 49 day, when the dew sparkled and the sun shone peculiarly bright, he so far forgot himself as to ascend a hillock and venture on a tolerably triumphant crow. It showed a lack of judg- ment ; his cock-a-doodle-doo proved fatal. Scarcely had he done so, when Cochin-China rushed upon him, tore out his feathers, and flogged him so severely that it was doubtful whether he would remain with us. Now, alas ! he presents a sad spectacle : his comb frozen off, his tail burnt off, and his head knocked to a jelly. While the corn jingles in the throats of his compeers when they eagerly snap it, as if they were eating from a pile of shilling pieces or fi'-penny bits, he stands aloof and grubs in the ground. How changed ! — Up the River. THOMAS BANGS THORPE. (born I815 — DIED 1878.) A "HOOSIER" IN SEARCH OF JUSTICE. ABOUT one hundred and twenty miles from New Orleans reposes, in all rural happiness, one of the plcasantest little towns in the South, that reflects itself in the mysterious waters of the Mississippi. To the extreme right of the town, looking at it from the river, may be seen a comfortable- looking building, surrounded by China trees; just such a place as sentimental misses dream of when they have indistinct notions of " set- tling in the world." This little " burban bandbox," however, is not occupied by the airs of love, nor the airs of the lute, but by a strong limb of the law, a gnarled one too, who knuckles down to business, and digs out of the " uncertainties of his profession" decisions, and reasons, and causes, and effects, nowhere to be met with, except in the science 150 A HOOSIER IN SEARCH OF JUSTICE. 151 called, par excellence, the " perfection of human reason." Around the interior walls of this romantic- looking placemay befound an extensive library, where all the " statutes," from Moses' time down to the present day, are ranged side by side ; in these musty books the owner revels day and night, digesting " digests," and grow- ing the while sallow, with indigestion. On the evening-time of a fine summer's day, the sage lawyer might have been seen walled in with books and manuscripts, his eye full of thought, and his bald high forehead sparkling with the rays of the setting sun, as if his genius was making itself visible to the senses ; page after page he searched, musty parchments were scanned, an expression of care and anxiety in- dented itself on the stern features of his face, and with a sigh of despair he desisted from his labors, uttering aloud his feelings that he feared his case was a hopeless one. Then he renewed again his mental labor with tenfold vigor, making the very silence, with which he pursued his thoughts, ominous, as if a spirit were in his presence. The door of the lawyer's office opened, there pressed forward the tall, gaunt figure of a man, 152 THOMAS BANGS THORPE. a perfect model of physical power and endur- ance — a Western flatboatman. The lawyer heeded not his presence, and started, as if from a dream, as the harsh tones of inquiry, grated upon his ear, of, " Does a 'Squire live here ? " " They call me so," was the reply, as soon as he had recovered from his astonishment. " Well, 'Squire," continued the intruder, " I have got a case for you, and I want jestess, if it costs the best load of produce that ever come from In-di-an." The man of the law asked what was the diffi- culty. " It 's this, 'Squire : I 'm bound for Or- leans, and put in here for coffee and other little fixins ; a chap with a face whiskered up like a prarie dog, says, says he, " ' Stranger, I see you 'vc got cocks on board of your boat — bring one ashore, and I '11 pit one against him that '11 lick his legs off in less time than you could gaff him.' Well, 'Squire, / never take a dar. Says I, ' Stranger, I 'm thar at wunce*; and in twenty minutes the cocks were on the levee, like parfect saints. " We chucked them together, and my bird, 'Squire, now mind, 'Squire, my bird never J HOOSIER IN- SEARCH OF JUSTICE. 1 53 struck a lick, not a single blow, but tuck to his heels and run, and by thunder, threw up his feed, actewelly vomited. The stakeholder gave up the money agin me, and now I want jestess ; as sure as fogs, my bird was physicked, or he 'd stood up to his business like a wild cat." The lawyer heard the story with patience, but flatly refused to have any thing to do with the matter. " Prehaps," said the boatman, drawing out a corpulent pocket-book, " prehaps you think I can't pay — here 's the money ; help yourself — ■ give me jestess, and draw on my purse like an ox team." To the astonishment of the flatboatman, the lawyer still refused, but unlike many of his pro- fession, gave his would-be client, without charge, some general advice about going on board of his boat, shoving off for New Orleans, and abandon- ing the suit altogether. The flatboatman stared with profound as- tonishment, and asked the lawyer, "if he was a sure enough ' Squire." Receiving an affirmative reply, he pressed every argument he could use, to have him undertake his case and get him "jestess," but when he found that his efforts were unavailing. 154 THOMAS BANGS THORPE. he quietly seated himself for the first time, put his hat aside, — crossed his legs, — then looking up to the ceiling with an expression of great patience, he requested the "'Squire, to read to him the Louisiana laws on cock-fighting." The lawyer said that he did not know of a single statute in the State upon the subject. The boatman started up as if he had been shot, exclaiming — " No laws in the State on cock-fighting? No, no, ' Squire, you can 't possum me ; give us the law." The refusal again followed ; the astonishment of the boatman increased, and tiirowing himself in a comico-hcroic attitude, he waved his long fingers around the sides of the room, and asked, " What all them thar books were about } " "All about the law." " Well, then, ' Squire, am I to understand that not one of them thar books contain a single law on cock-fighting?" "You are." "And, 'Squire, am I to understand that thar ain't no laws in Louisiana on cock-fighting?" " You are." " And am I to understand that you call your- A HOOSIER IN SEARCH OF JUSTICE. I 55 self a ' Squire, and that you don't know any thing about cock-fighting ? " " You are." The astonishment of the boatman at this re- ply for a moment was unbounded, and then suddenly ceased ; the awe with which he looked upon " the ' Squire " also ceased, and resuming his natural awkward and familiar carriage, he took up his hat, and walking to the door, with a broad grin of supreme contempt in his face, he observed, — " That a ' Squire that did not know the laws of cock-fighting, in his opinion, was distinctly an infernal old chuckel-headed fool!" — The Hive of the Bee-hunter. JOHN GODFREY SAXE. (born i8i6.) THE COQUETTE — A PORTRAIT. " '^ ^OU 'RE clever at drawing, I own," j[ Said my beautiful cousin Lisette, As we sat by the window alone, " But say, can you paint a Coquette ? " " She 's painted already," quoth I ; " Nay, nay ! " said the laughing Lisette, " Now none of your joking, — but try And paint me a thorough Coquette." " Well, cousin," at once I began In the ear of the eager Lisette, " I '11 paint you as well as I can. That wonderful thing, a Coquette. " She wears a most beautiful face," (" Of course," said the pretty Lisette,) " And is n't deficient in grace. Or else she were not a Coquette. 156 THE COQUETTE. I 57 " And then she is daintily made " (A smile from the dainty Lisette,) " By people expert in the trade Of forming a proper Coquette. " She 's the winningest ways with the beaux," (" Go on ! " said the winning Lisette,) " But there is n't a man of them knows The mind of the fickle Coquette ! " She knows how to weep and to sigh," (A sigh from the tender Lisette,) " But her weeping is all in my eye, — Not that of the cunning Coquette ! " In short, she 's a creature of art," (" O hush ! " said the frowning Lisette,) " With merely the ghost of a heart, — Enough for a thorough Coquette. " And yet I could easily prove " (" Now don't ! " said the angry Lisette,) " The lady is always in love, — In love with herself, — the Coquette ! *' There, — do not be angry ! — you know, My dear little cousin Lisette, You told me a moment ago. To paint /^« — a thorough Coquette I " JAMES THOMAS FIELDS. (born, i3i6 — DIED, 1881.) THE PKTTIISONE LINEAGE. MY name is Esek Pettibone, and I wish to affirm in the outset that it is a good thing to be well-born. In thus connecting the mention of my name with a positive state- ment, I am not unaware that a catastrophe lies coiled up in the juxtaposition. But I cannot help writing plainly that I am still in favor of a distinguished family-tree. EsTO PERPETUA ! To have had somebody for a great-grandfather that was somebody is exciting. To be able to look back on long lines of ancestry that were rich, but respectable, seems decorous and all right. The present Earl of Warwick, I think, must have an idea that strict justice has been done him in the way of being launched properly into the world. I saw the Duke of Newcastle once, and as the farmer in Conway described Mount Washington, I thought the Duke felt a 158 THE PETTIBONE LINEAGE. I 59 propensity to " hunch up some." Somehow it is pleasant to look down on the crowd and have a conscious right to do so. Left an orphan at the tender age of four years, having no brothers or sisters to prop me round with young affections and sympathies, I fell into three pairs of hands, excellent in their way, but peculiar. Patience, Eunice, and Mary Ann Pettibone were my aunts on my father's side. All my mother's relations kept shady when the lonely orphan looked about for pro- tection ; but Patience Pettibone, in her stately way, said,—" The boy belongs to a good family, and he shall never want while his three aunts can support him." So I went to live with my plain, but benignant protectors, in the State of New Hampshire. During my boyhood, the best-drilled lesson that fell to my keeping was this: " Respect yourself. We come of more than ordinary parentage. Superior blood was probably con- cerned in getting up the Pettibones. Hold your head erect, and some day you shall have proof of your high lineage." I remember once, on being told that I must not share my juvenile sports with the butcher's three little beings, I begged to know why not. l6o JAMES THOMAS FIELDS. Aunt Eunice looked at Patience, and Mary Ann knew what she meant. " I\Iy child," slowly murmured the eldest sister, " our family no doubt came of a very old stock; perhaps we belong to the nobility. Our ancestors, it is thought, came over laden with honors, and no doubt were embarrassed with riches, though the latter importation has dwindled in the lapse of years. Respect your- self, and when you grow up you will not regret that your old and careful aunt did not wish you to play with the butcher's offspring." I felt mortified that I ever had a desire to "knuckle up" with any but kings' sons, or sul- tans' little boys. I longed to be among my equals in the urchin line, and fly my kite with only high-born youngsters. Thus I lived in a constant scene of self-en- chantment on the part of the sisters, who as- sumed all the port and feeling that properly belonged to ladies of quality. Patrimonial splendor to come danced before their dim eyes; and handsome settlements, gay equi- pages, and a general grandeur of some sort loomed up in the future for the American branch of the House of Pettibone. It was a life of opulent self-delusion, which THE PETTIBONE LINEAGE. l6l my aunts were never tired of nursing ; and I was too young to doubt the reality of it. All the members of our little household held up their heads, as if each said, in so many words, " There is no original sin in our composition, whatever of that commodity there may be mixed up with the common clay of Snowborough." Aunt Patience was a star, and dwelt apart. Aunt Eunice looked at her through a de- termined pair of spectacles, and worshipped while she gazed. The youngest sister lived in a dreamy state of honors to come, and had con- stant zoological visions of lions, grififins, and unicorns, drawn and quartered in every possible style known to the Heralds' College. The Rev- erend Hebrew Bullet, who used to drop in quite often and drink several compulsory glasses of home-made wine, encouraged his three parishioners in their aristocratic notions, and extolled them for what he called their " stooping-down to every-day life." He dif- fered with the ladies of our house only on one point. He contended that the unicorn of the Bible and the rhinoceros of to-day were one and the same animal. My aunts held a different opinion. In the sleeping-room of my Aunt Patience 1 62 JAMES THOMAS FIELDS. reposed a trunk. Often during my childish years I longed to lift the lid and spy among its contents the treasures my young fancy con- jured up as lying there in state. I dared not ask to have the cover raised for my gratifica- tion, as I had often been told I was " too little " to estimate aright what that armorial box con- tained. " When you grow up, you shall see the inside of it," Aunt Mary used to say to mc ; and so I wondered, and wished, but all in vain. I must have the virtue of years before I could view the treasures of past magnificence so long entombed in that wooden sarcophagus. Once I saw the faded sisters bending over the trunk together, and, as I thought, embalming some- thing in camphor. Curiosity impelled mc to linger, but, under some pretext, I was nodded out of the room. Although my kinswomen's means were far from ample, they determined that Swiftmouth College should have the distinction of calling me one of her sons, and accordingly I was in due time sent for preparation to a neighboring academy. Years of study and hard fare in country boarding-houses told upon my self- importance as the descendant of a great Eng- lishman, notwithstandingall my letters from the THE PETTIBONE LINEAGE. 1 63 honored three came with counsel to " respect myself and keep up the dignity of the family." Growing-up man forgets good counsel. The Arcadia of respectability is apt to give place to the levity of foot-ball and other low-toned ac- complishments. The book of life, at that period, opens readily at fun and frolic, and the insignia of greatness give the school-boy no envious pangs. I was nineteen when I entered the hoary halls of Swiftmouth. I call them hoary, be- cause they had been built more than fifty years. To me they seemed uncommonly hoary, and I snuffed antiquity in the dusty purlieus. I now began to study, in good earnest, the wisdom of the past. I saw clearly the value of dead men and mouldy precepts, especially if the former had been entombed a thousand years, and if the latter were well done in sounding Greek and Latin. I began to reverence royal lines of deceased monarchs, and longed to con- nect my own name, now growing into college popularity, with some far-off mighty one who had ruled in pomp and luxury his obsequious people. The trunk in Snowborough troubled my dreams. In that receptacle still slept the proof of our family distinction. " I will go," 164 JAMES THOMAS FIELDS. quoth I, " to the home of my aunts next vaca- tion and there learn Jiow we became mighty, and discover precisely why we don't practise to day our inherited claims to glory." I went to Snowborough. Aunt Patience was now anxious to lay before her impatient nephew the proof he burned to behold. But first she must explain. All the old family documents and letters were, no doubt, de- stroyed in the great fire of '98, as nothing in the shape of parchment or paper implying no- bility had ever been discovered in Snowbor- ough, or elsewhere. But there had been preserved, for many years, a suit of imperial clothes that had been worn by their great- grandfather in England, and, no doubt, in the New World also. These garments had been carefully watched and guarded, for were they not the proof that their owner belonged to a station in life second, if second at all, to the royal court of King George itself? Precious casket, into which I was soon to have the privi- lege of gazing ! Through how many long years these fond, foolish virgins had lighted their unflickering lamps of expectation and hope at this cherished old shrine ! I was now on my way to the family repository THE PETTIBONE LINEAGE. 1 65 of all our greatness. I went up stairs " on the jump." We all knelt down before the well- preserved box ; and my proud Aunt Patience, in a somewhat reverent manner, turned the key. My heart, — I am not ashamed to confess it now, although it is forty years since the quartet, in search of family honors, were on their knees that summer afternoon in Snow- borough, — my heart beat high. I was about to look on that which might be a duke's or an earl's regalia. And I was descended from the owner in a direct line ! I had lately been read- ing Shakspeare's "Titus Andronicus " ; and I remembered, there before the trunk, the lines, — ' O sacred receptacle of my joys, Sweet cell of virtue and nobility ! " The lid went up, and the sisters began to unroll the precious garments, which seemed all en- shrined in aromatic gums and spices. The odor of that interior lives with me to this day ; and I grow faint with the memory of that hour. With pious precision the clothes were uncov- ered, and at last the whole suit was laid before my expectant eyes. Reader ! I am an old man now, and have not long to walk this planet. But, whatever dread- l66 JAMES THOMAS FIELDS. ful shock may be in reserve for my declining years, I am certain I can bear it ; for I went through that scene at Snowborough, and still live ! When the garments were fully displayed, all the aunts looked at me. I had been to college ; I had studied Burke's " Peerage " ; I had been once to New York. Perhaps I could immedi- ately name the exact station in noble British life to which that suit of clothes bcloneed. I could ; I saw it all at a glance. I grew flus- tered and pale. I dared not look my poor deluded female relatives in the face. " What rank in the peerage do these gold- laced garments and big buttons betoken ? " cried all three. " // is a suit of servant' s livery ! " gasped I, and fell back with a shudder. That evening, after the sun had gone down, we buried those hateful garments in a ditch at the bottom of the garden. Rest there per- turbed body-coat, yellow trousers, brown gaiters, and all ! " Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye ! " — Atlantic Monthly, April, 1865. • FREDERICK S. COZZENS. (born, i8i8 — DIED, 1869.) THE FAMILY HORSE. I HAVE bought me a horse. As I had ob« tained some skill in the manege during my younger days, it was a matter of considera- tion to have a saddle-horse. It surprised me to find good saddle-horses very abundant soon after my consultation with the stage proprietor upon this topic. There were strange saddle- horses to sell almost every day. One man was very candid about his horse : he told me, if his horse had a blemish, he would n't wait to be asked about it ; he would tell it right out ; and, if a man did n't want him then, he need n't take him. He also proposed to put him on trial for sixty days, giving his note for the amount paid him for the horse, to be taken up in case the animal were returned. I asked him what were the principal defects of the horse. He said he 'd been fired once, because they 167 1 68 FREDEPICK S. COZZENS. thought he was spavined ; but there was no more spavin to him than there was to a fresh- laid egg — he was as sound as a dollar. I asked him if he would just state what were the de- fects of the horse. He answered, that he once had the pink-eye, and added, " now that 's honest." I thought so, but proceeded to ques- tion him closely. I asked him if he had the bots. He said, not a bot. I asked him if he would go. He said he would go till he dropped down dead ; just touch liim with a whip, and he '11 jump out of his hide. I inquired how old he was. He answered, just eight years, exact- ly — some men, he said, wanted to make their horses younger than they be ; he was willing to speak right out, and own up he was eight years. I asked him if there were any other objections. He said no, except that he was inclined to be a little gay ; " but," he added, " he is so kind, a child can drive him with a thread." I asked him if he was a good family horse. He replied that no lady that ever drew rein over him would be willing to part with him. Then I asked him his price. He an- swered that no man could have bought him for one hundred dollars a month ago, but now he was willing to sell him for scvcnty-five, on ac- THE FAMILY HORSE. 1 69 count of having a note to pay. This seemed such a very low price, I was about saying I would take him, when Mrs. Sparrowgrass whis- pered, that I had better see the horse first. I confess I was a little afraid of losing my bargain by it, but, out of deference to Mrs. S., I did ask to see the horse before I bought him. He said he would fetch him down. " No man," he added, " ought to buy a horse unless he 's saw him." When the horse came down, it struck me that, whatever his qualities might be, his personal appearance was against him. One of his fore legs was shaped like the handle of our punch-ladle, and the remaining three legs, about the fetlock, were slightly bunchy. Besides, he had no tail to brag of ; and his back had a very hollow sweep, from his high haunches to his low shoulder-blades. I was much pleased, how- ever, with the fondness and pride manifested by his owner, as he held up, by both sides of the bridle, the rather longish head of his horse, surmounting a neck shaped like a pea-pod, and said, in a sort of triumphant voice, " three- quarters blood ! " Mrs. Sparrowgrass flushed up a little, when she asked me if I intended to purchase that horse, and added, that, if I did, she would never want to ride. So I told the I70 FREDERICK S. COZZENS. man he would not suit me. He answered by suddenly throwing himself upon his stomach across the back-bone of his horse, and then, by turning round as on a pivot, got up a-straddle of him ; then he gave his horse a kick in the ribs that caused him to jump out with all his legs, like a frog, and then ofT went the spoon- legged animal with a gait that was not a trot, nor yet precisely pacing. He rode around our grass-plot twice, and then pulled his horse's head up like the cock of a musket. " That," said he, " is //;;/^'." I replied that he did seem to go pretty fast. " Pretty fast ! " said his owner. " Well, do you know Mr. ? " men- tioning one of the richest men in our village. I replied that I was acquainted with him. "Well," said he, " you know his horse?" I replied that I had no personal acquaintance with him. " Well," said he, " he 's the fastest horse in the county — jist so — I 'm willin' to admit it. But do you know I offered to put my horse agin' his to trot ? I had no money to put up, or, rayther, to spare ; but I offered to trot him, horse agin' horse, and the winner to take both horses, and I tell you — he would nt do It ! " Mrs. Sparrowgrass got a little nervous, and THE FAMILY HORSE. 171 twitched me by the skirt of the coat. " Dear," said she, " let him go." I assured her that I would not buy the horse, and told the man firmly I would not buy him. He said very well — if he did n't suit 't was no use to keep a-talkin' : but he added, he *d be down agin' with another horse, next morning, that belonged to his brother; and if he did n't suit me, then I did n't want a horse. With this remark he rode off. . . . " It rains very hard," said Mrs. Sparrowgrass, looking out of the window next morning. Sure enough, the rain was sweeping broadcast over the country, and the four Sparrowgrassii were flattening a quartet of noses against the window-panes, believing most faithfully the man would bring the horse that belonged to his brother, in spite of the elements. It was hoping against hope ; no man having a horse to sell will trot him out in a rain-storm, unless he intend to sell him at a bargain — but childhood is so credulous ! The succeeding morning was bright, however, and down came the horse. He had been very cleverly groomed, and looked pleasant under the saddle. The man led him back and forth before the door. " There, 'squire, 's as good a hos as ever stood on iron." 1/2 FREDERICK S. COZZENS. Mrs. Sparrowgrass asked me what he meant by that. I replied, it was a figurative way of ex- pressing, in horse-talk, that he was as good a horse as ever stood in shoe-leather. " He 's a handsome hos, 'squire," said the man. I re- plied that he did seem to be a good-looking animal ; but, said I, " he does not quite come up to the description of a horse I have read." " Whose hos was it ? " said he. I replied it was the horse of Adonis. He said he did n't know him ; but, he added, " there is so man^ bosses stolen, that the descriptions are stuck up now pretty common." To put him at his ease (for he seemed to think I suspected him of having stolen the horse), I told him the description I meant had been written some hun- dreds of years ago by Shakspeare, and repeated it : " Round-hoof t, short-joynted, fetlocks shag and long, Broad breast, full eyes, small head, and nostrils wide, Hi^h crest, short ears, straight legs, and ])assing strong, Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide."