A 
 
 REESE LIBRARY 
 >} THK 
 VERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Accessions 
 
 M',V 
 (7 
 
 Slulf No.- 
 
May 1, 1849* 
 
 j 1ST OF BOOKS 
 
 TICKNOR, REED AND FIELDS, 
 
 Corner of OTasjutiflton anto School Streets, 
 BOSTON. 
 
 LONGFELLOW'S POEMS. 
 
 i. 
 
 LONGFELLOW'S EVANGELINE ; A TALE OF 
 
 ACADIE. Just published. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents. 
 II. 
 
 LONGFELLOW'S VOICES OF THE NIGHT. A 
 
 New Edition. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents. 
 
 ill. * 
 
 LONGFELLOW'S BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
 A New Edition. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents. 
 IV. 
 
 LONGFELLOW'S SPANISH STUDENT. A Play 
 
 in Three Acts. A New Edition. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents. 
 v. 
 
 LONGFELLOW'S BELFRY OF BRUGES AND 
 
 OTHER POEMS. A New Edition. In one volume, IGmo, price 75 cents 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE WAIF. A Collection of Poems. Edited by 
 
 LONGFELLOW. A New Edition. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents. 
 VII. 
 
 THE ESTRAY. A Collection of Poems. Edited 
 
 by LONGFELLOW. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents. 
 
 PROSE WORKS. 
 
 LONGFELLOW'S KAVANAGH. A TALE. Ju 
 
 Published. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents. 
 II. 
 
 LONGFELLOW'S OUTRE-MER. A Pilgrimage 
 
 Beyond the Sea. N A New Edition. In one volume, 16mo, price $1.00. 
 in. 
 
 LONGFELLOW'S HYPERION. A ROMANCE. A 
 
 New Edition. In one volume, 16mo, price $1.00. 
 
A LIST OF BOOKS RECENTLY PUBLISHED 
 
 POETRY 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. POEMS. In one 
 
 volume, 16mo. .New Edition, Enlarged. Just out. Price $1.00. 
 
 ALFRED TENNYSON. POEMS. A New Edition. 
 
 Enlarged. In two volumes, ICmo, price $1.50. 
 in. 
 
 ALFRED TENNYSON. THE PRINCESS. A MEDLEY. 
 
 Just out. In one volume, 16mo, price 50 cents. 
 
 IV. 
 
 WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. POEMS, NARRATIVE 
 
 and LYRICAL. A New Edition, Enlarged. In one volume, 16mo, price 
 75 cents. 
 
 v. 
 
 WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. MINSTRELSY, AN- 
 CIENT and MODERN. Wrth an HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION and 
 NOTES. In two volumes, IGmo, price $1.50. 
 
 RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. POEMS OF 
 
 MANY YEARS. In one volume, IGmo, price 75 cents. 
 
 VII. 
 
 LEIGH HUNT. STORY OF RIMINI and Other Poems. 
 
 In one volume, 16mo, price 50 cents. 
 
 Till. 
 
 REJECTED ADDRESSES. From the 19th London 
 
 Edition. Carefully Revised. With an ORIGINAL PREFACE and NOTES. 
 By HORACE and JAMES SMITH. In one volume, 16mo, price 50 cents. 
 
 IX. 
 
 BARRY CORNWALL. ENGLISH SONGS and other 
 
 SMALL POEMS. In one volume, IGmo, price 75 cents. 
 x. 
 
 JOHN BOWRING. MATINS AND VESPERS, with HYMNS 
 
 AND OCCASIONAL, DEVOTIONAL, PIECES. In one volume, 32mo, cloth, 
 gilt edges, price 37 1-2 cents. 
 
 xr. 
 
 GEORGE LUNT. THE AGE OF GOLD and OTHER 
 
 POEMS. In one volume, IGmo, price 50 cents. 
 
 Xll. 
 
 MARY E. HEWITT. SONGS OF OUR LAND and 
 
 OTHER POEMS. In one volume, 16mo, price 75 cents. 
 
 Xlll. 
 
 T. BUCHANAN READ. POEMS. In one volume, 
 
 IGtno, price 50 cents. 
 
 BACH OP THE ABOVE POEMS AND PROSE WRITINGS, MAY BE HAD IN 
 VARIOUS STYLES OP HANDSOME BINDING. 
 
BY TICKNOR, REED AND FIELDS. 
 
 i. 
 ALDERBROOK ; A Collection of Fanny Forester's 
 
 VILLAGE SKETCHES, POEMS, etc. In two volumes, J2mo, with a fine 
 Portrait of the Author. A New Edition, Enlarged. Just out. 
 n. 
 
 BEN PERLEY POORE. THE RISE AND FALL OF 
 
 Louis PHILIPPE, with Pen and Pencil Sketches of his Friends and his 
 Successors. Portraits. $100. 
 
 in. 
 
 F. W. P, GREENWOOD. SERMONS OF CONSOLA- 
 
 TIOW. A iNew Edition, on very fine paper and large type. In one vol- 
 ume, IGnio, price $1.00. 
 
 IV. 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN : MORAL, POET- 
 
 ICAL and HISTORICAL. By MRS. JAMESON. New Edition, Corrected and 
 Enlarged. In one volume, 12mo, price $1.00. 
 v. 
 
 MRS. PUTNAM'S RECEIPT BOOK; AND YOUNG 
 
 HOUSEKEEPER'S ASSISTANT. In one volume, 16mo, price 50 cents. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN ; Considered in 
 
 Relation to External Objects. By GEORGE COMBE. With an Additional 
 Chapter, on the HARMONY BETWEEN PHRENOLOGY AND REV- 
 ELATK )N. By J. A. WARNE, A. M. Twenty-sixth American Edition. 
 In one volume, 12mo, price 75 cents. 
 
 VII. 
 
 ORTHOPHONY ; Or the Culture of the Voice in 
 
 Elocution. A Manual of ELEMENTARY EXERCISES, adapted to Dr. Rush's 
 "PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN VOICE," and the system of Vocal 
 Culture introduced by Mr. James E.Murdoch. Designed as an INTRO- 
 DUCTION to Russell's "AMERICAN ELOCUTIONIST." Compiled 
 by WILLIAM RUSSELL, author of " Lessons in Enunciation," etc. With 
 a Supplement on PURITY OF TONE, by G. J. WEBB, Professor, Boston 
 Academy of Music. Improved Edition. In one volume, 12mo, price 
 621-2 cents. 
 
 vni. 
 
 ELEMENTARY TREATISE ON MINERALOGY. 
 
 Comprising an INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE. By WILLIAM 
 PHILLIPS. Fifth Edition, from the Fourth London Edition. By ROBERT 
 ALUN. Containing the Latest Discoveries in American and Foreign 
 Mineralogy, with numerous Additions to the Introduction, by FRANCIS 
 ALGER. With numerous Engravings. One volume, ]2mo, price $3.00. 
 
 THE USE OF THE BLOWPIPE IN CHEMISTRY 
 
 AND MINERALOGY. By J. J. BERZELIUS. Translated from the 4th 
 Enlarged and Corrected Edition, by J. D. WHITNEY. With Plates. In 
 one volume, 12mo, price $1.50. 
 
 x. 
 
 A BRIEF PRACTICAL TREATISE ON MOR- 
 TARS IN BUILDING. With an Account of the Processes employed 
 on the Public Works in Boston Harbor. By Lieut. WILLIAM IJ. WRIGHT, 
 U. S. Corps of Engineers. With Plates. In one volume, 12mo, price 
 $1.00. 
 
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY TICKNOR, REED AND FIELDS. 
 
 A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE CULTIVA- 
 TION OF THE GRAPE VINE ON OPEN WALLS. To which is 
 added, a Descriptive Account of an Improved Method of Planting and 
 Managing the Roots of Grape Vines. With Plates. In one volume, 
 12niOj price 62 1-2 cents. 
 
 Xll. 
 
 THE SCENERY-SHOW-ER; with WORD-PAINTINGS 
 
 of the BEAUTIFUL, the PICTURESQUE, and the GRAND IN NATURE. By 
 WARREN BURTON. In one volume, 18mo, price 37 1-2 cents. 
 
 xm. 
 
 DR. JOHN C. WARREN. PHYSICAL EDUCATION 
 
 and THE PRESERVATION OF HEALTH. Third Edition, Enlarged. 18mo, 
 price 25 cents. 
 
 xiv, 
 
 ANGEL-VOICES ; or WORDS OF COUNSEL FOR OVER- 
 
 COMING THE WORLD. In one volume, 18mo. A New Edition, Enlarged, 
 xv. 
 
 A BUDGET OF LETTERS, OR THINGS WHICH I 
 
 SAW ABROAD. In one volume, 12mo, price $1.00. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 CONSUELO, and the COUNTESS OF RUDOLSTADT. 
 
 By GEORGE SAND. Translated by FRANCIS G. SHAW. Complete in five 
 volumes, 12mo, price 50 cents per volume. Each work sold separate. 
 xvu. 
 
 DR. WALTER CHANNING. A TREATISE ON 
 
 ETHERIZATION IN CHILDBIRTH. Illustrated by 581 cases. In one vol- 
 ume, 8vo, just published, price $2.00. 
 
 FRENCH. 
 
 COUNT DE LAPORTE'S FRENCH GRAMMAR; 
 
 Containing all the Rules of the Language, upon a New and Improved 
 Plan. New (Stereotype) Edition. 1 vol. 12mo, half-embossed morocco, 
 $1.50. 
 
 COUNT DE LAPORTE'S SPEAKING EXERCI- 
 
 SES. For the Illustration of the Rules and Idioms of the French 
 Language. New (Stereotype) Edition. 1 vol. 12mo. half embossed mo- 
 rocco, 63 cents. 
 
 COUNT DE LAPORTE'S KEY TO THE FRENCH 
 
 EXEllCISES. New (Stereotype) Edition. 1 vol. 12mo, half-embossed 
 morocco, 50 cents. 
 
 COUNT DE LAPORTE'S EXERCISES AND KEY. 
 
 Bound in 1 volume, half-embossed morocco, $1.00. 
 
 COUNT DE LAPORTE'S SELF - TEACHING 
 
 READER. For the Study of the Pronunciation of the French Lan- 
 guage, after a Plan entirely New, which will enable the Student to 
 acquire with facility a Correct Pronunciation, with or without the assist- 
 ance of a Teacher. New (Stereotype) Edition. 1 volume, 12mo, half- 
 embossed morocco, 50 cents. 
 
 The above Series is used in the Universities of Cambridge, Hanover, and Vir- 
 ginia, as well as in many other Colleges, Academies, and Schools, 
 in JVewJ England and elseichere. 
 
K AVA N A G H. 
 
K AVANAGH, 
 
 
 A TALE. 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 The Highly ptll^)ose never is o'ertook, 
 Unless the deed go with it. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS. 
 
 M DCCC XLIX. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by 
 
 H. W. LONGFELLOW, 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
 
 METCALF AND COMPANY, 
 
 PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
OF THE 
 
 UUI7EESIT? 
 
 KAVANAGH. 
 
 1. 
 
 GREAT men stand like solitary towers in the 
 city of God, and secret passages running deep 
 beneath external nature give their thoughts inter- 
 course with higher intelligences, which strength- 
 ens and consoles them, and of which the laborers 
 on the surface do not even dream ! 
 
 Some such thought as this was floating vaguely 
 through the brain of Mr. Churchill, as he closed 
 his school-house door behind him ; and if in any 
 degree he applied it to himself, it may perhaps be 
 pardoned in a dreamy, poetic man like him ; for 
 we judge ourselves by what we feel capable of 
 doing, while others judge us by what we have 
 already done. And moreover his wife consider- 
 ed him equal to great things. To the people in 
 
4 KAVANAGH, 
 
 the village, he was the school-master, and nothing 
 more. They beheld in his form and countenance 
 no outward sign of the divinity within. They 
 saw him daily moiling and delving in the common 
 path, like a beetle, and little thought that under- 
 neath that hard and cold exterior, lay folded deli- 
 cate golden wings, wherewith, when the heat of 
 day was over, he soared and revelled in the 
 pleasant evening air. 
 
 To-day he was soaring and revelling before the 
 sun had set ; for it was Saturday. With a feel- 
 ing of infinite relief he left behind him the empty 
 school-house, into which the hot sun of a Sep- 
 tember afternoon was pouring. All the bright 
 young faces were gone ; all the impatient little 
 hearts were gone ; all the fresh voices, shrill, but 
 musical with the melody of childhood, were 
 gone ; and the lately busy realm was given up to 
 silence, and the dusty sunshine, and the old gray 
 flies, that buzzed and bumped their heads against 
 the window-panes. The sound of the outer door, 
 creaking on its hebdomadal hinges, was like a sen- 
 tinel's challenge, to which the key growled re- 
 sponsive in the lock ; and the master, casting a 
 furtive glance at the last caricature of himself in 
 red chalk on the wooden fence close by, entered 
 
A TALE. 5 
 
 with a light step the solemn avenue of pines that 
 led to the margin of the river. 
 
 At first his step was quick and nervous ; and 
 he swung his cane as if aiming blows at some in- 
 visible and retreating enemy. Though a meek 
 man, there were moments when he remembered 
 with bitterness the unjust reproaches of fathers 
 and their insulting words ; and then he fought im- 
 aginary battles with people out of sight, and struck 
 them to the ground, and trampled upon them ; for 
 Mr. Churchill was not exempt from the weak- 
 ness of human nature, nor the customary vexa- 
 tions of a school-master's life. Unruly sons and 
 unreasonable fathers did sometimes embitter his 
 else sweet days and nights. But as he walked, 
 his step grew slower, and his heart calmer. The 
 coolness and shadows of the great trees comfort- 
 ed and satisfied him, and he heard the voice of 
 the wind as it were the voice of spirits calling 
 around him in the air. So that when he emerged 
 from the black woodlands into the meadows by 
 the river's side, all his cares were forgotten. 
 
 He lay down for a moment under a syca- 
 more, and thought of the Roman Consul Licinius, 
 passing a night with eighteen of his followers in 
 the hollow trunk of the great Lycian plane-tree. 
 
6 KAVANAGH, 
 
 From the branches overhead the falling seeds 
 were wafted away through the soft air on plumy 
 tufts of down. The continuous murmur of the 
 leaves and of the swift-running stream seemed 
 rather to deepen than disturb the pleasing solitude 
 and silence of the place ; and for a moment he 
 imagined himself far away in the broad prairies of 
 the West, and lying beneath the luxuriant trees 
 that overhang the banks of the Wabash and the 
 Kaskaskia. He saw the sturgeon leap from the 
 river, and flash for a moment in the sunshine. 
 Then a flock of wild-fowl flew across the sky to- 
 wards the sea-mist that was rising slowly in the 
 east ; and his soul seemed to float away on the 
 river's current, till he had glided far out into the 
 measureless sea, and the sound of the wind among 
 the leaves was no longer the sound of the wind, 
 but of the sea. 
 
 Nature had made Mr. Churchill a poet, but des- 
 tiny made him a school-master. This produced 
 a discord between his outward and his inward ex- 
 istence. Life presented itself to him like the 
 Sphinx, with its perpetual riddle of the real and 
 the ideal. To the solution of this dark problem 
 he devoted his days and his nights. He was 
 forced to teach grammar when he would fain 
 
A TALE. 7 
 
 have written poems ; and from day to day, and 
 from year to year, the trivial things of life post- 
 poned the great designs, which he felt capable of 
 accomplishing, but never had the resolute courage 
 to begin. Thus he dallied with his thoughts and 
 with all things, and wasted his strength on trifles ; 
 like the lazy sea, that plays with the pebbles on 
 its beach, but under the inspiration of the wind 
 might lift great navies on its outstretched palms, 
 and toss them into the air as playthings. 
 
 The evening came. The setting sun stretched 
 his celestial rods of light across the level land- 
 scape, and, like the Hebrew in Egypt, smote the 
 rivers and the brooks and the ponds, and they be- 
 came as blood. 
 
 Mr. Churchill turned his steps homeward. He 
 climbed the hill with the old windmill on its sum- 
 mit, and below him saw the lights of the village ; 
 and around him the great landscape sinking deeper 
 and deeper into the sea of darkness. He passed 
 an orchard. The air was filled with the odor of 
 the fallen fruit, which seemed to him as sweet as 
 the fragrance of the blossoms in June. A few 
 steps farther brought him to an old and neglected 
 church-yard ; and he paused a moment to look at 
 the white gleaming stone, under which slumbered 
 
KAVANAGH, 
 
 the old clergyman, who came into the village in 
 the time of the Indian wars, and on which was re- 
 corded that for half a century he had been " a 
 painful preacher of the word." He entered the 
 village street, and interchanged a few words with 
 Mr. Pendexter, the venerable divine, whom he 
 found standing at his gate. He met, also, an ill- 
 looking man, carrying so many old boots that he 
 seemed literally buried in them ; and at intervals 
 encountered a stream of strong tobacco smoke, 
 exhaled from the pipe of an Irish laborer, and 
 pervading the damp evening air. At length he 
 reached his own door. 
 
A TALE. 
 
 II. 
 
 WHEN Mr. Churchill entered his study, he 
 found the lamp lighted, and his wife waiting for 
 him. The wood fire was singing on the hearth 
 like a grasshopper in the heat and silence of a 
 Summer noon ; and to his heart the chill autum- 
 nal evening became a Summer noon. His wife 
 turned towards him with looks of love in her joy- 
 ous blue eyes ; and in the serene expression of 
 her face he read the Divine beatitude, " Blessed 
 are the pure in heart." 
 
 No sooner had he seated himself by the fireside 
 than the door was swung wide open, and on the 
 threshold stood, with his legs apart, like a minia- 
 ture colossus, a lovely, golden boy, about three 
 years old, with long, light locks, and very red 
 cheeks. After a moment's pause, he dashed for- 
 ward into the room with a shout, and established 
 
10 KAVANAGH, 
 
 himself in a large arm-chair, which he converted 
 into a carrier's wagon, and over the back of which 
 he urged forward his imaginary horses. He was 
 followed by Lucy, the maid of all work, bear- 
 ing in her arms the baby, with large, round eyes, 
 and no hair. In his mouth he held an India rub- 
 ber ring, and looked very much like a street-door 
 knocker. He came down to say good night, but 
 after he got down, could not say it ; not being 
 able to say any thing but a kind of explosive 
 " Papa ! " He was then a good deal kissed and 
 tormented in various ways, and finally sent off to 
 bed blowing little bubbles with his mouth, Lucy 
 blessing his little heart, and asseverating that no- 
 body could feed him in the night without loving 
 him ; and that if the flies bit him any more she 
 would pull out every tooth in their heads ! 
 
 Then came Master Alfred's hour of triumph 
 and sovereign sway. The fire-light gleamed on 
 his hard, red cheeks, and glanced from his liquid 
 eyes, and small, white teeth. He piled his wagon 
 full of books and papers, and dashed off to town 
 at the top of his speed ; he delivered and re- 
 ceived parcels and letters, and played the post- 
 boy's horn with his lips. Then he climbed the 
 back of the great chair, sang " Sweep ho ! " as 
 
A TALE. 11 
 
 from the top of a very high chimney, and, sliding 
 down upon the cushion, pretended to fall asleep 
 in a little white bed, with white curtains ; from 
 which imaginary slumber his father awoke him by 
 crying in his ear, in mysterious tones, 
 
 " What little boy is this ! " 
 
 Finally he sat down in his chair at his mother's 
 knee, and listened very attentively, and for the 
 hundredth time, to the story of the dog Jumper, 
 which was no sooner ended, than vociferously 
 called for again and again. On the fifth repetition, 
 it was cut as short as the dog's tail by Lucy, who, 
 having put the baby to bed, now came for Master 
 Alfred. He seemed to hope he had been forgot- 
 ten, but was nevertheless marched off to bed, 
 without any particular regard to his feelings, and 
 disappeared in a kind of abstracted mood, repeat- 
 ing softly to himself his father's words, 
 
 " Good night, Alfred !" 
 
 His father looked fondly after him as he went 
 up stairs, holding Lucy by one hand, and with the 
 other rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. 
 
 " Ah ! these children, these children ! " said 
 Mr. Churchill, as he sat down at the tea-table ; 
 " we ought to love them very much now, for we 
 shall not have them long with us ! " 
 
12 KAVANAGH, 
 
 " Good heavens ! " exclaimed his wife, u what 
 do you mean ? Does any thing ail them ? Are 
 they going to die ? " 
 
 " I hope not. But they are going to grow up, 
 and be no longer children." 
 
 " O, you foolish man ! You gave me such a 
 fright ! " 
 
 " And yet it seems impossible that they should 
 ever grow to be men, and drag the heavy artil- 
 lery along the dusty roads of life." 
 
 " And I hope they never will. That is the 
 last thing I want either of them to do." 
 
 " O, I do not mean literally, only figuratively. 
 By the way, speaking of growing up and growing 
 old, I saw Mr. Pendexter this evening, as I came 
 home." 
 
 " And what had he to say ? " 
 
 cc He told me he should preach his farewell 
 sermon to-morrow." 
 
 " Poor old man ! I really pity him." 
 
 " So do I. But it must be confessed he is a 
 dull preacher ; and I dare say it is as dull work 
 for him as for his hearers." 
 
 " Why are they going to send him away ? " 
 
 " O, there are a great many reasons. He 
 does not give time and attention enough to his 
 
A TALE. 13 
 
 sermons and to his parish. He is always at work 
 on his farm ; always wants his salary raised ; and 
 insists upon his right to pasture his horse in the 
 parish fields." 
 
 " Hark ! " cried his wife, lifting up her face in 
 a listening attitude. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " 
 
 " I thought I heard the baby ! " 
 
 There was a short silence. Then Mr. Church- 
 ill said, 
 
 " It was only the cat in the cellar." 
 
 At this moment Lucy came in. She hesitated 
 a little, and then, in a submissive voice, asked 
 leave to go down to the village to buy some rib- 
 bon for her bonnet. Lucy was a girl of fifteen, 
 who had been taken a few years before from an 
 Orphan Asylum. Her dark eyes had a gypsy 
 look, and she wore her brown hair twisted round 
 her head after the manner of some of Murillo's 
 girls. She had Milesian blood in her veins, and 
 was impetuous and impatient of contradiction. 
 
 When she had left the room, the school-master 
 resumed the conversation by saying, 
 
 " I do not like Lucy's going out so much in 
 the evening. I am afraid she will get into trouble. 
 She is really very pretty." 
 
14 KAVANAGH, 
 
 Then there was another pause, after which he 
 added, 
 
 " My dear wife, one thing puzzles me exceed- 
 bgly." 
 
 " And what is that ? " 
 
 u It is to know what that man does with all the 
 old boots he picks up about the village. I met 
 him again this evening. He seemed to have as 
 many feet as Briareus had hands. He is a kind 
 of centipede." 
 
 " But what has that to do with Lucy ? " 
 
 " Nothing. It only occurred to me at the 
 moment ; and I never can imagine what he does 
 with so many old boots." 
 
A TALE. 15 
 
 III. 
 
 WHEN tea was over, Mr. Churchill walked to 
 and fro in his study, as his custom was. And as 
 he walked, he gazed with secret rapture at the 
 books, w r hich lined the walls, and thought how 
 many bleeding hearts and aching heads had found 
 consolation for themselves and imparted it to 
 others, by writing those pages. The books 
 seemed to him almost as living beings, so instinct 
 were they with human thoughts and sympathies. 
 It was as if the authors themselves were gazing at 
 him from the walls, with countenances neither 
 sorrowful nor glad, but full of calm indifference 
 to fate, like those of the poets who appeared to 
 Dante in his vision, walking together on the dolor- 
 ous shore. And then he dreamed of fame, and 
 thought that perhaps hereafter he might be in 
 some degree, and to some one, what these men 
 
16 KAVANAGH, 
 
 were to him ; and in the enthusiasm of the 
 moment he exclaimed aloud, 
 
 u Would you have me be like these, dear 
 Mary ? 
 
 " Like these what ? " asked his wife, not com- 
 prehending him. 
 
 " Like these great and good men, like these 
 scholars and poets, the authors of all these 
 books ! " 
 
 She pressed his hand and said, in a soft, but 
 excited tone, 
 
 u O, yes ! Like them, only perhaps better ! " 
 
 u Then I will write a Romance ! " 
 
 u Write it ! " said his wife, like the angel. 
 For she believed that then he would become 
 famous for ever ; and that all the vexed and busy 
 world would stand still to hear him blow his little 
 trumpet, whose sound was to rend the adaman- 
 tine walls of time, and reach the ears of a far-off 
 and startled posterity. 
 
A TALE. 17 
 
 IV. 
 
 " I WAS thinking to-day," said Mr. Churchill 
 a few minutes afterwards, as he took some papers 
 from a drawer scented with a quince, and arranged 
 them on the study table, while his wife as usual 
 seated herself opposite to him with her work in 
 her hand, "I was thinking to-day how dull and 
 prosaic the study of mathematics is made in our 
 school-books ; as if the grand science of num- 
 bers had been discovered and perfected merely 
 to further the purposes of trade." 
 
 " For my part," answered his wife, u I do 
 not see how you can make mathematics poetical. 
 There is no poetry in them." 
 
 " Ah, that is a very great mistake ! There 
 
 is something divine in the science of numbers. 
 
 Like God, it holds the sea in the hollow of its 
 
 hand. It measures the earth ; it weighs the stars ; 
 
 2 
 
18 KAVANAGH, 
 
 it illumines the universe ; it is law, it is order, it 
 is beauty. And yet we imagine that is, most 
 of us that its highest end and culminating point 
 is book-keeping by double entry. It is our way 
 of teaching it that makes it so prosaic." 
 
 So saying, he arose, and went to one of his 
 book-cases, from the shelf of which he took down 
 a little old quarto volume, and laid it upon the 
 table. 
 
 "Now here," he continued, "is a book of 
 mathematics of quite a different stamp from ours." 
 
 " It looks very old. What is it ? " 
 
 "It is the Lilawati of Bhascara Acharya, 
 translated from the Sanscrit." 
 
 "It is a pretty name. Pray what does it 
 mean ? " 
 
 " Lilawati was the name of Bhascara's daugh- 
 ter ; and the book was written to perpetuate it. 
 Here is an account of the whole matter." 
 
 He then opened the volume, and read as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 " It is said that the composing of Lilawati was 
 occasioned by the following circumstance. Lila- 
 wati was the name of the author's daughter, con- 
 cerning whom it appeared, from the qualities of 
 the Ascendant at her birth, that she was destined 
 
A TALE. 19 
 
 to pass her -life unmarried, and to remain without 
 children. The father ascertained a lucky hour 
 for contracting her in marriage, that she might be 
 firmly connected, and have children. It is said 
 that, when that hour approached, he brought his 
 daughter and his intended son near him. He left 
 the hour-cup on the vessel of water, and kept in 
 attendance a time-knowing astrologer, in order 
 that, when the cup should subside in the water, 
 those two precious jewels should be united. But 
 as the intended arrangement was not according to 
 destiny, it happened that the girl, from a curiosity 
 natural to children, looked into the cup to observe 
 the water coming in at the hole ; when by chance 
 a pearl separated from her bridal dress, fell into 
 the cup, and, rolling down to the hole, stopped the 
 influx of the water. So the astrologer waited in 
 expectation of the promised hour. When the 
 operation of the cup had thus been delayed be- 
 yond all moderate time, the father was in conster- 
 nation, and examining, he found that a small pearl 
 had stopped the course of the water, and the long- 
 expected hour was passed. In short, the father, 
 thus disappointed, said to his unfortunate daugh- 
 ter, I will write a book of your name, which shall 
 remain to the latest times, for a good name is 
 
20 KAVANAGH, 
 
 a second life, and the groundwork of eternal ex- 
 istence." 
 
 As the school-master read, the eyes of his wife 
 dilated and grew tender, and she said, 
 
 " What a beautiful story ! When did it hap- 
 pen ? " 
 
 " Seven hundred years ago, among the Hin- 
 doos." 
 
 " Why not write a poem about it ? " 
 
 " Because it is already a poem of itself, one 
 of those things, of which the simplest statement is 
 the best, and which lose by embellishment. The 
 old Hindoo legend, brown with age, would not 
 please me so well if decked in gay colors, and 
 hung round with the tinkling bells of rhyme. 
 Now hear how the book begins." 
 
 Again he read ; 
 
 " Salutation to the elephant-headed Being who 
 infuses joy into the minds of his worshippers, 
 who delivers from every difficulty those that call 
 upon him, and whose feet are reverenced by the 
 gods ! Reverence to Ganesa, who is beautiful 
 as the pure purple lotos, and around whose neck 
 the black curling snake winds itself in playful 
 folds ! " 
 
 " That sounds rather mystical," said his wife. 
 
A TALE. 21 
 
 " Yes, the book begins with a salutation to the 
 Hindoo deities, as the old Spanish Chronicles 
 begin in the name of God, and the Holy Virgin. 
 And now see how poetical some of the examples 
 are." 
 
 He then turned over the leaves slowly and 
 read, 
 
 u One-third of a collection of beautiful water- 
 lilies is offered to Mahadev, one-fifth to Huri, 
 one-sixth to the Sun, one-fourth to Devi, and six 
 which remain are presented to the spiritual teach- 
 er. Required the whole number of water-lilies." 
 
 " That is very pretty," said the wife, " and 
 would put it into the boys' heads to bring you 
 pond-lilies." 
 
 " Here is a prettier one still. One-fifth of a 
 hive of bees flew to the Kadamba flower ; one- 
 third flew to the Silandhara ; three times the dif- 
 ference of these two numbers flew to an arbor ; 
 and one bee continued flying about, attracted on 
 each side by the fragrant Ketaki and the Malati. 
 What was the number of the bees ? " 
 
 " T am sure I should never be able to tell." 
 
 " Ten times the square root of a flock of 
 geese " 
 
 Here Mrs. Churchill laughed aloud ; but he 
 continued very gravely, 
 
22 KAVANAGH, 
 
 u Ten times the square root of a flock of 
 geese, seeing the clouds collect, flew to the 
 Manus lake ; one-eighth of the whole flew from 
 the edge of the water amongst a multitude of 
 water-lilies ; and three couple were observed 
 playing in the water. Tell me, my young girl 
 with beautiful locks, what was the whole number 
 of geese ? " 
 
 " Well, what was it ? " 
 
 " What should you think ? " 
 
 " About twenty." 
 
 " No, one hundred and forty-four. Now try 
 another. The square root of half a number of 
 bees, and also eight-ninths of the whole, alighted 
 on the jasmines, and a female bee buzzed respon- 
 sive to the hum of the male inclosed at night in a 
 water-lily. O, beautiful damsel, tell me the num- 
 ber of bees." 
 
 " That is not there. You made it." 
 
 u No, indeed I did not. I wish I had made it. 
 Look and see." 
 
 He showed her the book, and she read it her- 
 self. He then proposed some of the geometrical 
 questions. 
 
 " In a lake the bud of a water-lily was ob- 
 served, one span above the water, and when 
 
A TALE. 23 
 
 moved by the gentle breeze, it sunk in the water 
 at two cubits' distance. Required the depth of 
 the water." 
 
 " That is charming, but must be very difficult. 
 I could not answer it." 
 
 " A tree one hundred cubits high is distant 
 from a well two hundred cubits ; from this tree 
 one monkey descends and goes to the well ; an- 
 other monkey takes a leap upwards, and then de- 
 scends by the hypothenuse ; and both pass over 
 an equal space. Required the height of the 
 leap." 
 
 " I do not believe you can answer that ques- 
 tion yourself, without looking into the book," said 
 the laughing wife, laying her hand over the solu- 
 tion. " Try it." 
 
 "With great pleasure, my dear child," cried 
 the confident school-master, taking a pencil and 
 paper. After making a few figures and calcula- 
 tions, he answered, 
 
 " There, my young girl with beautiful locks, 
 there is the answer, forty cubits." 
 
 His wife removed her hand from the book, and 
 then, clapping both in triumph, she exclaimed, 
 
 " No, you are wrong, you are wrong, my 
 beautiful youth with a bee in your bonnet. It 
 is fifty cubits ! " 
 
24 KAVANAGH, 
 
 " Then I must have made some mistake." 
 
 " Of course you did. Your monkey did not 
 jump high enough." 
 
 She signalized his mortifying defeat as if it had 
 been a victory, by showering kisses, like roses, 
 upon his forehead and cheeks, as he passed be- 
 neath the triumphal arch- way of her arms, trying 
 in vain to articulate, 
 
 " My dearest Lilawati, what is the whole 
 number of the geese ? " 
 
A TALE. 25 
 
 UinVEBSITY 
 
 v. 
 
 AFTER extricating himself from this pleasing 
 dilemma, he said, 
 
 " But I am now going to write. I must really 
 begin in sober earnest, or I shall never get any 
 thing finished. And you know I have so many 
 things to do, so many books to write, that really 
 I do not know where to begin. I think I will 
 take up the Romance first." . 
 
 " It will not make much difference, if you only 
 begin ! " 
 
 " That is true. I will not lose a moment." 
 
 " Did you answer Mr. Cartwright's letter 
 about the cottage bedstead ? " 
 
 " Dear me, no ! I forgot it entirely. That 
 must be done first, or he will make it all wrong." 
 
 " And the young lady who sent you the poetry 
 to look over and criticize ? " 
 
26 KAVANAGH, 
 
 " No ; I have not had a single moment's leis- 
 ure. And there is Mr. Hanson, who wants to 
 know about the cooking-range. Confound it ! 
 there is always something interfering with my 
 Romance. However, I will despatch those mat- 
 ters very speedily." 
 
 And he began to write with great haste. For 
 a while nothing was heard but the scratching of 
 his pen. Then he said, probably in connection 
 with the cooking-range, 
 
 <c One of the most convenient things in house- 
 keeping is a ham. It is always ready, and always 
 welcome. You can eat it with any thing and with- 
 out any tiling. It reminds me always of the great 
 wild boar Scrimner, in the Northern Mythology, 
 who is killed every day for the gods to feast on 
 in Valhalla, and comes to life again every night." 
 
 " In that case, I should think the gods would 
 have the night-mare," said his wife. 
 
 " Perhaps they do." 
 
 And then another long silence, broken only by 
 the skating of the swift pen over the sheet. 
 Presently Mrs. Churchill said, as if following 
 out her own train of thought, while she ceased 
 plying her needle to bite off the thread, which 
 ladies will sometimes do in spite of all that is said 
 against it, 
 
A 1ALE. 27 
 
 " A man came here to-day, calling himself the 
 agent of an extensive house in the needle trade. 
 He left this sample, and said the drill of the eye 
 was superior to any other, and they are warranted 
 not to cut the thread. He puts them at the 
 wholesale price ; and if I do not like the sizes, he 
 offers to exchange them for others, either sharps 
 or betweens." 
 
 To this remark the abstracted school-master 
 vouchsafed no reply. He found his half-dozen 
 letters not so easily answered, particularly that 
 to the poetical young lady, and worked away 
 busily at them. Finally they were finished and 
 sealed ; and he looked up to his wife. She 
 turned her eyes dreamily upon him. Slumber 
 was hanging in their blue orbs, like snow in the 
 heavens, ready to fall. It was quite late, and he 
 said to her, 
 
 " I am too tired, my charming Lilawati, and 
 you too sleepy, to sit here any longer to-night. 
 And, as I do not wish to begin my Romance 
 without having you at my side, so that I can read 
 detached passages to you as I write, I will put it 
 off till to-morrow or the next day." 
 
 He watched his wife as she went up stairs with 
 the light. It was a picture always new and al- 
 
28 KAVAWGH, 
 
 ways beautiful, and like a painting of Gherardo 
 della Notte. As he followed her, he paused to 
 look at the stars. The beauty of the heavens 
 made his soul overflow. 
 
 u How absolute," he exclaimed, u how abso- 
 lute and omnipotent is the silence of the night ! 
 And yet the stillness seems almost audible ! 
 From all the measureless depths of air around us 
 comes a half-sound, a half-whisper, as if we could 
 hear the crumbling and falling away of earth 
 and all created things, in the great miracle of 
 nature, decay and reproduction, ever beginning, 
 never ending, the gradual lapse and running of 
 the sand in the great hour-glass of Time ! " 
 
 In the night, Mr. Churchill had a singular 
 dream. He thought himself in school, where he 
 was reading Latin to his pupils. Suddenly all the 
 genitive cases of the first declension began to 
 make faces at him, and to laugh immoderately ; 
 and when he tried to lay hold of them, they 
 jumped down into the ablative, and the circum- 
 flex accent assumed the form of a great mous- 
 tache. Then the little village school-house was 
 transformed into a vast and endless school-house 
 of the world, stretching forward, form after form, 
 through all the generations of coming time ; and 
 
A TALE. 29 
 
 on all the forms sat young men and old, reading 
 and transcribing his Romance, which now in his 
 dream was completed, and smiling and passing it 
 onward from one to another, till at last the clock 
 in the corner struck twelve, and the weights 
 ran down with a strange, angry whirr, and the 
 school broke up ; and the school-master awoke 
 to find this vision of fame only a dream, out of 
 which his alarm-clock had aroused him at an 
 untimely hour. 
 
30 KAVANAGH, 
 
 VI. 
 
 MEANWHILE, a different scene was taking 
 place at the parsonage. Mr. Pendexter had 
 retired to his study to finish his farewell sermon. 
 Silence reigned through the house. Sunday had 
 already commenced there. The week ended 
 with the setting of the sun, and the evening 
 and the morning were the first day. 
 
 The clergyman was interrupted in his labors by 
 the old sexton, who called as usual for the key of 
 the church. He was gently rebuked for coming 
 so late, and excused himself by saying that his 
 wife was worse. 
 
 " Poor woman ! " said Mr. Pendexter ; "has 
 she her mind ? " 
 
 " Yes," answered the sexton, u as much as 
 ever." 
 
 " She has been ill a long time," continued 
 
A TALE. 31 
 
 the clergyman. " We have had prayers for her 
 a great many Sundays." 
 
 "It is very true, sir," replied the sexton, 
 mournfully; "I have given you a great deal of 
 trouble. But you need not pray for her any 
 more. It is of no use." 
 
 Mr. Pendexter's mind was in too fervid a state 
 to notice the extreme and hopeless humility of his 
 old parishioner, and the unintentional allusion to 
 the inefficacy of his prayers. He pressed the old 
 man's hand warmly, and said, with much emo- 
 tion, 
 
 " To-morrow is the last time that I shall 
 preach in this parish, where I have preached for 
 twenty-five years. But it is not the last time I 
 shall pray for you and your family." 
 
 The sexton retired also much moved ; and the 
 clergyman again resumed his task. His heart 
 glowed and burned within him. Often his face 
 flushed and his eyes filled with tears, so that he 
 could not go on. Often he rose and paced the 
 chamber to and fro, and wiped away the large 
 drops that stood on his red and feverish fore- 
 head. 
 
 At length the sermon was finished. He rose 
 and looked out of the window. Slowly the clock 
 
32 KAVANAGH, 
 
 struck twelve. He had not heard it strike before, 
 since six. The moon-light silvered the distant 
 hills, and lay, white almost as snow, on the frosty 
 roofs of the village. Not a light could be seen at 
 any window. 
 
 " Ungrateful people ! Could you not watch 
 with me one hour ? " exclaimed he, in that ex- 
 cited and bitter moment ; as if he had thought 
 that on that solemn night the whole parish would 
 have watched, while he was writing his farewell 
 discourse. He pressed his hot brow against the 
 window-pane to allay its fever ; and across the 
 tremulous wavelets of the river the tranquil moon 
 sent towards him a silvery shaft of light, like an 
 angelic salutation. And the consoling thought 
 came to him, that not only this river, but all 
 rivers and lakes, and the great sea itself, were 
 flashing with this heavenly light, though he beheld 
 it as a single ray only ; and that what to him 
 were the dark waves were the dark providences 
 of God, luminous to others, and even to himself 
 should he change his position. 
 
A TALE. 33 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE morning came ; the dear, delicious, silent 
 Sunday ; to the weary workman, both of brain 
 and hand, the beloved day of rest. When the 
 first bell rang, like a brazen mortar, it seemed 
 from its gloomy fortress to bombard the village 
 with bursting shells of sound, that exploded over 
 the houses, shattering the ears of all the parish- 
 ioners and shaking the consciences of many. 
 
 Mr. Pendexter was to preach his farewell 
 sermon. The church was crowded, and only one 
 person came late. It was a modest, meek girl, 
 who stole silently up one of the side aisles, 
 not so silently, however, but that the pew-door 
 creaked a little as she opened it ; and straightway 
 a hundred heads were turned in that direction, 
 although it was in the midst of the prayer. Old 
 Mrs. Fairfield did not turn round, but she and her 
 3 
 
34 KAVANAGH, 
 
 daughter looked at each other, and their bonnets 
 made a parenthesis in the prayer, within which 
 one asked what that was, and the other replied, 
 
 " It is only Alice Archer. She always comes 
 late." 
 
 Finally the long prayer was ended, and the 
 congregation sat down, and the weary children 
 who are always restless during prayers, and had 
 been for nearly half an hour twisting and turning, 
 and standing first on one foot and then on the 
 other, and hanging their heads over the backs of 
 the pews, like tired colts looking into neighbour- 
 ing pastures settled suddenly down, and sub- 
 sided into something like rest. 
 
 The sermon began, such a sermon as had 
 never been preached, or even heard of before. 
 It brought many tears into the eyes of the pastor's 
 friends, and made the stoutest hearts among his 
 foes quake with something like remorse. As he 
 announced the text, " Yea, I think it meet as 
 long as I am in this tabernacle to stir you up, by 
 putting you in remembrance," it seemed as if the 
 apostle Peter himself, from whose pen the words 
 first proceeded, were calling them to judgment. 
 
 He began by giving a minute sketch of his 
 ministry and the state of the parish, with all its 
 
A TALE. 35 
 
 troubles and dissensions, social, political, and 
 ecclesiastical. He concluded by thanking those 
 ladies who had presented him with a black silk 
 gown, and had been kind to his wife during her 
 long illness ; by apologizing for having ne- 
 glected his own business, which was to study and 
 preach, in order to attend to that of the parish, 
 which was to support its minister, stating that 
 his own short-comings had been owing to theirs, 
 which had driven him into the woods in winter 
 and into the fields in summer ; and finally 
 by telling the congregation in general that they 
 were so confirmed in their bad habits, that no 
 reformation was to be expected in them under 
 his ministry, and that to produce one would re- 
 quire a greater exercise of Divine power than it 
 did to create the world ; for in creating the world 
 there had been no opposition, whereas, in their 
 reformation, their own obstinacy and evil propen- 
 sities, and self-seeking, and worldly-mindedness, 
 were all to be overcome ! 
 
36 KAVANAGH, 
 
 VIII. 
 
 WHEN Mr. Pendexter had finished his dis- 
 course, and pronounced his last benediction upon 
 a congregation to whose spiritual wants he had 
 ministered for so many years, his people, now his 
 no more, returned home in very various states of 
 mind. Some were exasperated, others mortified, 
 and others filled with pity. 
 
 Among the last was Alice Archer, a fair, 
 delicate girl, whose whole life had been saddened 
 by a too sensitive organization, and by somewhat 
 untoward circumstances. She had a pale, trans- 
 parent complexion, and large gray eyes, that 
 seemed to see visions. Her figure was slight, 
 almost fragile ; her hands white, slender, diapha- 
 nous. With these external traits her character 
 was in unison. She was thoughtful, silent, sus- 
 ceptible ; often sad, often in tears, often lost in 
 
A TALE. 37 
 
 reveries. She led a lonely life with her mother, 
 who was old, querulous, and nearly blind. She 
 had herself inherited a predisposition to blindness ; 
 and in her disease there was this peculiarity, that 
 she could see in Summer, but in Winter the power 
 of vision failed her. 
 
 The old house they lived in, with its four 
 sickly Lombardy poplars in front, suggested 
 gloomy and mournful thoughts. It was one of 
 those houses that depress you as you enter, as if 
 many persons had died in it, sombre, desolate, 
 silent. The very clock in the hall had a dismal 
 sound, gasping and catching its breath at times, 
 and striking the hour with a violent, determined 
 blow, reminding one of Jael driving the nail into 
 the head of Sisera. 
 
 One other inmate the house had, and only one. 
 This was Sally Manchester, or Miss Sally Man- 
 chester, as she preferred to be called ; an excel- 
 lent chamber-maid and a very bad cook, for she 
 served in both capacities. She was, indeed, an 
 extraordinary woman, of large frame and mascu- 
 line features ; one of those who are born to 
 work, and accept their inheritance of toil as if it 
 were play, and who consequently, in the language 
 of domestic recommendations, are usually styled 
 
38 KAVANAGH, 
 
 " a treasure, if you can get her." A treasure 
 she was to this family ; for she did all the house- 
 work, and in addition took care of the cow and 
 the poultry, occasionally venturing into the field 
 of veterinary practice, and administering lamp-oil 
 to the cock, when she thought he crowed hoarse- 
 ly. She had on her forehead what is sometimes 
 denominated a " widow's peak," that is to say, 
 her hair grew down to a point in the middle ; and 
 on Sundays she appeared at church in a blue 
 poplin gown, with a large pink bow on what she 
 called u the congregation side of her bonnet." 
 Her mind was strong, like her person ; her dis- 
 position not sweet, but, as is sometimes said of 
 apples by way of recommendation, a pleasant 
 sour. 
 
 Such were the inmates of the gloomy house, 
 from which the last-mentioned frequently ex- 
 pressed her intention of retiring, being engaged to 
 a travelling dentist, who, in filling her teeth with 
 amalgam, had seized the opportunity to fill a soft 
 place in her heart with something still more dan- 
 gerous and mercurial. The wedding-day had 
 been from time to time postponed, and at length 
 the family hoped and believed it never would 
 come, a wish prophetic of its own fulfilment. 
 
A TALE. 
 
 39 
 
 Almost the only sunshine that from without 
 shone into the dark mansion came from the face 
 of Cecilia Vaughan, the school-mate and bosom- 
 friend of Alice Archer. They were nearly of 
 the same age, and had been drawn together by 
 that mysterious power which discovers and selects 
 friends for us in our childhood. They sat togeth- 
 er in school ; they walked together after school ; 
 they told each other their manifold secrets ; they 
 wrote long and impassioned letters to each other 
 in the evening ; in a word, they were in love with 
 each other. It was, so to speak, a rehearsal in 
 girlhood of the great drama of woman's life. 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
40 KAVANAGH, 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE golden tints of Autumn now brightened 
 the shrubbery around this melancholy house, and 
 took away something of its gloom. The four 
 poplar trees seemed all ablaze, and flickered in 
 the wind like huge torches. The little border of 
 box rilled the air with fragrance, and seemed to 
 welcome the return of Alice, as she ascended the 
 steps, and entered the house with a lighter heart 
 than usual. The brisk autumnal air had quick- 
 ened her pulse and given a glow to her cheek. 
 
 She found her mother alone in the parlour, 
 seated in her large arm-chair. The warm sun 
 streamed in at the uncurtained windows ; and 
 lights and shadows from the leaves lay upon her 
 face. She turned her head as Alice entered, 
 and said, 
 
 " Who is it ? Is it you, Alice ? " 
 
A TALE. 41 
 
 " Yes, it is I, mother." 
 
 " Where have you been so long ? " 
 
 u I have been nowhere, dear mother. I have 
 come directly home from church." 
 
 u How long it seems to me ! It is very late. 
 It is growing quite dark. I was just going to call 
 for the lights." 
 
 " Why, mother ! " exclaimed Alice, in a 
 startled tone ; u what do you mean ? The sun 
 is shining directly into your face ! " 
 
 " Impossible, my dear Alice. It is quite 
 dark. I cannot see you. Where are you ? " 
 
 She leaned over her mother and kissed her. 
 Both were silent, both wept. They knew that 
 the hour, so long looked forward to with dismay, 
 had suddenly come. Mrs. Archer was blind ! 
 
 This scene of sorrow was interrupted by the 
 abrupt entrance of Sally Manchester. She, too, 
 was in tears ; but she was weeping for her own 
 affliction. In her hand she held an open let- 
 ter, which she gave to Alice, exclaiming amid 
 sobs, 
 
 u Read this, Miss Archer, and see how false 
 man can be ! Never trust any man ! They are 
 all alike ; they are all false false false ! " 
 
 Alice took the letter and read as follows : 
 
42 KAVANAGH, 
 
 "It is with pleasure, Miss Manchester, I sit 
 down to write you a few lines. I esteem you as 
 highly as ever, but Providence has seemed to 
 order and direct my thoughts and affections to 
 another, one in my own neighbourhood. It 
 was rather unexpected to me. Miss Manchester, 
 I suppose you are well aware that we, as pro- 
 fessed Christians, ought to be resigned to our lot 
 in this world. May God assist you, so that we 
 may be prepared to join the great company in 
 heaven. Your answer would be very desirable. 
 I respect your virtue, and regard you as a friend. 
 MARTIN CHERRYFIELD. 
 
 " P. S. The society is generally pretty good 
 here, but the state of religion is quite low." 
 
 " That is a cruel letter, Sally," said Alice, as 
 she handed it back to her. " But we all have 
 our troubles. That man is unworthy of you. 
 Think no more about him." 
 
 " What is the matter ?" inquired Mrs. Archer, 
 hearing the counsel given and the sobs with which 
 it was received. " Sally, what is the matter ? " 
 
 Sally made no answer ; but Alice said, 
 
 " Mr. Cherryfield has fallen in love with some- 
 body else." 
 
A TALE. 43 
 
 cc Is that all ? " said Mrs. Archer, evidently 
 relieved. " She ought to be very glad of it. 
 Why does she want to be married ? She had 
 much better stay with us ; particularly now that 
 I am blind." 
 
 When Sally heard this last word, she looked 
 up in consternation. In a moment she forgot 
 her own grief to sympathize with Alice and her 
 mother. She wanted to do a thousand things at 
 once ; to go here ; to send there ; to get 
 this and that ; and particularly to call all the 
 doctors in the neighbourhood. Alice assured 
 her it would be of no avail, though she finally 
 consented that one should be sent for. 
 
 Sally went in search of him. On her way, her 
 thoughts reverted to herself ; and, to use her own 
 phrase, " she curbed in like a stage-horse," as 
 she walked. This state of haughty and offended 
 pride continued for some hours after her return 
 home. Later in the day, she assumed a decent 
 composure, and requested that the man she 
 scorned to name him might never again be 
 mentioned in her hearing. Thus was her whole 
 dream of felicity swept away by the tide of fate, 
 as the nest of a ground-swallow by an inundation. 
 It had been built too low to be secure. 
 
44 KAVANAGH, 
 
 Some women, after a burst of passionate tears, 
 are soft, gentle, affectionate ; a warm and genial 
 air succeeds the rain. Others clear up cold, and 
 are breezy, bleak, and dismal. Of the latter class 
 was Sally Manchester. She became embittered 
 against all men on account of one ; and was often 
 heard to say that she thought women were fools 
 to be married, and that, for one, she would not 
 marry any man, let him be who he might, not 
 she ! 
 
 The village doctor came. He was a large 
 man, of the cheerful kind ; vigorous, florid, en- 
 couraging ; and pervaded by an indiscriminate 
 odor of drugs. Loud voice, large cane, thick 
 boots ; every thing about him synonymous with 
 noise. His presence in the sick-room was like 
 martial music, inspiriting, but loud. He sel- 
 dom left it without saying to the patient, " I hope 
 you will feel more comfortable to-morrow," or, 
 " When your fever leaves you, you will be bet- 
 ter." But, in this instance, he could not go so 
 far. Even his hopefulness was not sufficient for 
 the emergency. Mrs. Archer was blind, be- 
 yond remedy, beyond hope, irrevocably blind ! 
 
A TALE. 45 
 
 X. 
 
 ON the following morning, very early, as the 
 school-master stood at his door, inhaling the 
 bright, wholesome air, and beholding the shadows 
 of the rising sun, and the flashing dew-drops 
 on the red vine-leaves, he heard the sound 
 of wheels, and saw Mr. Pendexter and his wife 
 drive down the village street in their old-fashioned 
 chaise, known by all the boys in town as " the 
 ark." The old white horse, that for so many 
 years had stamped at funerals, and gnawed the 
 tops of so many posts, and imagined he killed so 
 many flies because he wagged the stump of a tail, 
 and, finally, had been the cause of so much dis- 
 cord in the parish, seemed now to make common 
 cause with his master, and stepped as if endeav- 
 ouring to shake the dust from his feet as he passed 
 out of the ungrateful village. Under the axle-tree 
 
46 KAVANAGH, 
 
 hung suspended a leather trunk ; and in the chaise, 
 between the two occupants, was a large bandbox, 
 which forced Mr. Pendexter to let his legs hang 
 out of the vehicle, and gave him the air of imi- 
 tating the Scriptural behaviour of his horse. 
 Gravely and from a distance he saluted the 
 school-master, who saluted him in return, with a 
 tear in his eye, that no man saw, but which, 
 nevertheless, was not unseen. 
 
 cc Farewell, poor old man ! " said the school- 
 master within himself, as he shut out the cold 
 autumnal air, and entered his comfortable study. 
 " We are not worthy of thee, or we should have 
 had thee with us forever. Go back again to the 
 place of thy childhood, the scene of thine early 
 labors and thine early love ; let thy days end 
 where they began, and like the emblem of eter- 
 nity, let the serpent of life coil itself round and 
 take its tail into its mouth, and be still from all 
 its hissings for evermore ! I would not call thee 
 back ; for it is better thou shouldst be where 
 thou art, than amid the angry contentions of this 
 little town." 
 
 Not all took leave of the old clergyman in so 
 kindly a spirit. Indeed, there was a pretty gen- 
 eral feeling of relief in the village, as when one 
 
A TALE. 47 
 
 gets rid of an ill-fitting garment, or old-fashioned 
 hat, which one neither wishes to wear, nor is 
 quite willing to throw away. 
 
 Thus Mr. Pendexter departed from the village. 
 A few days afterwards he was seen at a fall 
 training, or general muster of the militia, making 
 a prayer on horseback, with his eyes wide 
 open ; a performance in which he took evident 
 delight, as it gave him an opportunity of going 
 quite at large into some of the bloodiest cam- 
 paigns of the ancient Hebrews. 
 
48 KAVANAGH, 
 
 XL 
 
 FOR a while the school-master walked to and 
 fro, looking at the gleam of the sunshine on the 
 carpet, and revelling in his day-dreams of unwrit- 
 ten books, and literary fame. With these day- 
 dreams mingled confusedly the pattering of little 
 feet, and the murmuring and cooing of his children 
 overhead. His plans that morning, could he 
 have executed them, would have filled a shelf in 
 his library with poems and romances of his own 
 creation. But suddenly the vision vanished ; and 
 another from the actual world took its place. It 
 was the canvas-covered cart of the butcher, that, 
 like the flying wigwam of the Indian tale, flitted 
 before his eyes. It drove up the yard and stop- 
 ped at the back door ; and , the poet felt that the 
 sacred rest of Sunday, the God's-truce with 
 worldly cares, was once more at an end. A 
 
A TALE. 49 
 
 dark hand passed between him and the land of 
 light. Suddenly closed the ivory gate of dreams, 
 and the horn gate of every-day life opened, and 
 he went forth to deal with the man of flesh and 
 blood. 
 
 " Alas ! " said he with a sigh ; u and must my 
 life, then, always be like the Sabbatical river of 
 the Jews, flowing in full stream only on the 
 seventh day, and sandy and arid all the rest ? " 
 
 Then he thought of his beautiful wife and 
 children, and added, half aloud, 
 
 " No ; not so ! Rather let me look upon the 
 seven days of the week as the seven magic rings 
 of Jarchas, each inscribed with the name of a 
 separate planet, and each possessing a peculiar 
 power ; or as the seven sacred and mysterious 
 stones which the pilgrims of Mecca were forced 
 to throw over their shoulders in the valleys of 
 Menah and Akbah, cursing the devil and saying 
 at each throw, ' God is great ! ' 
 
 He found Mr. Wilmerdings, the butcher, stand- 
 ing beside his cart, and surrounded by five cats, 
 that had risen simultaneously on their hind legs, 
 to receive their quotidian morning's meal. Mr. 
 Wilmerdings not only supplied the village with 
 fresh provisions daily, but he likewise weighed all 
 4 
 
50 KAVANAGH, 
 
 the babies. There was hardly a child in town 
 that had not hung beneath his steelyards, tied 
 in a silk handkerchief, the movable weight above 
 sliding along the notched beam from eight pounds 
 to twelve. He was a young man with a very 
 fresh and rosy complexion, and every Monday 
 morning he appeared dressed in an exceedingly 
 white frock. He had lately married a milliner, 
 who sold "Dunstable and eleven-braid, open- 
 work and colored straws," and their bridal tour 
 had been to a neighbouring town to see a man 
 hanged for murdering his wife. A pair of huge 
 ox-horns branched from the gable of his slaughter- 
 house ; and near it stood the great pits of the 
 tannery, which all the school-boys thought were 
 filled with blood ! 
 
 Perhaps no two men could be more unlike than 
 Mr. Churchill and Mr. Wilmerdings. Upon 
 such a grating, iron hinge opened the door of his 
 daily life ; opened into the school-room, the 
 theatre of those life-long labors, which theoreti- 
 cally are the most noble, and practically the most 
 vexatious in the world. Toward this, as soon 
 as breakfast was over, and he had played awhile 
 with his children, he directed his steps. On his 
 way, he had many glimpses into the lovely realms 
 
A TALE. 51 
 
 of Nature, and one into those of Art, through the 
 medium of a placard pasted against a wall. It 
 was as follows : 
 
 " The subscriber professes to take profiles, 
 plain and shaded, which, viewed at right-angles 
 with the serious countenance, are warranted to be 
 infallibly correct. 
 
 " No trouble of adorning or dressing the person 
 is required. He takes infants and children at 
 sight, and has frames of all sizes to accommodate. 
 
 u A profile is a delineated outline of the ex- 
 terior form of any person's face and head, the use 
 of which when seen tends to vivify the affections 
 of those whom we esteem or love. 
 
 WILLIAM BANTAM." 
 
 Ere long even this glimpse into the ideal world 
 had vanished ; and he felt himself bound to the 
 earth with a hundred invisible threads, by which a 
 hundred urchins were tugging and tormenting 
 him ; and it was only with considerable effort, 
 and at intervals, that his mind could soar to the 
 moral dignity of his profession. 
 
 Such was the school-master's life ; and a 
 dreary, weary life it would have been, had not 
 
52 KAVANAGH, 
 
 poetry from within gushed through every crack 
 and crevice in it. This transformed it, and made 
 it resemble a well, into which stones and rubbish 
 have been thrown ; but underneath is a spring of 
 fresh, pure water, which nothing external can 
 ever check or defile. 
 
A TALE. 53 
 
 XII. 
 
 MR. PENDEXTER had departed. Only a few 
 old and middle-aged people regretted him. To 
 these few, something was wanting in the service 
 ever afterwards. They missed the accounts of 
 the Hebrew massacres, and the wonderful tales 
 of the Zumzummims ; they missed the venerable 
 gray hair, and the voice that had spoken to them 
 in childhood, and forever preserved the memory 
 of it in their hearts, as in the Russian church the 
 old hymns of the earliest centuries are still piously 
 retained. 
 
 The winter came, with ah 1 its affluence of 
 snows, and its many candidates for the vacant 
 pulpit. But the parish was difficult to please, as 
 all parishes are ; and talked of dividing itself, and 
 building a new church, and other extravagances, 
 as all parishes do. Finally it concluded to re- 
 
54 KAVANAGH, 
 
 main as it was, and the choice of a pastor was 
 made. 
 
 The events of the winter were few in number, 
 and can be easily described. The following ex- 
 tract from a school-girl's letter to an absent 
 friend contains the most important : 
 
 " At school, things have gone on pretty much 
 as usual. Jane Brown has grown very pale. 
 They say she is in a consumption ; but I think it 
 is because she eats so many slate-pencils. One 
 of her shoulders has grown a good deal higher 
 than the other. Billy Wilmer dings has been 
 turned out of school for playing truant. He 
 promised his mother, if she would not whip him, 
 he would experience religion. I am sure I wish 
 he would ; for then he would stop looking at me 
 through the hole in the top of his desk. Mr. 
 Churchill is a .very curious man. To-day he 
 gave us this question in arithmetic : c One-fifth of 
 a hive of bees flew to the Kadamba flower ; one- 
 third flew to the Silandhara ; three times the 
 difference of these two numbers flew to an 
 arbor ; and one bee continued flying about, 
 attracted on each side by the fragrant Ketaki 
 and the Malati. What was the number of bees ? ' 
 Nobody could do the sum. 
 
A TALE. 55 
 
 " The church has been repaired, and we 
 have a new mahogany pulpit. Mr. Churchill 
 bought the old one, and had it put up in his 
 study. What a strange man he is ! A good many 
 candidates have preached for us. The only one 
 we like is Mr. Kavanagh. Arthur Kavanagh ! 
 is not that a romantic name ? He is tall, very 
 pale, with beautiful black eyes and hair ! Sally 
 Alice Archer's Sally says c he is not a 
 man ; he is a Thaddeus of Warsaw ! ' I think 
 he is very handsome. And such sermons ! So 
 beautifully written, so different from old Mr. 
 Pendexter's ! He has been invited to settle 
 here ; but he cannot come till Spring. Last 
 Sunday he preached about the ruling passion. 
 He said that once a German nobleman, when 
 he was dying, had his hunting-horn blown in his 
 bed-room, and his hounds let in, springing and 
 howling about him ; and that so it was with the 
 ruling passions of men ; even around the death- 
 bed, at the well-known signal, they howled and 
 leaped about those that had fostered them ! 
 Beautiful, is it not ? and so original ! He said 
 in another sermon, that disappointments feed and 
 nourish us in the desert places of life, as the 
 ravens did the Prophet in the wilderness ; and 
 
56 KAVANAGH, 
 
 that as, in Catholic countries, the lamps lighted 
 before the images of saints, in narrow and danger- 
 ous streets, not only served as offerings of devo- 
 tion, but likewise as lights to those who passed, 
 so, in the dark and dismal streets of the city of 
 Unbelief, every good thought, word, and deed 
 of a man, not only was an offering to heaven, but 
 likewise served to light him and others on their 
 way homeward ! I have taken a good many 
 notes of Mr. Kavanagh's sermons, which you 
 shall see when you come back. 
 
 u Last week we had a sleigh-ride, with six 
 white horses. We went like the wind over the 
 hollows in the snow ; the driver called them 
 ' thank-you-ma'ams,' because they make every 
 body bow. And such a frantic ball as we had at 
 Beaverstock ! I wish you had been there ! We 
 did not get home till two o'clock in the morning ; 
 and the next day Hester Green's minister asked 
 her if she did not feel the fire of a certain place 
 growing hot under her feet, while she was 
 dancing ! 
 
 " The new fashionable boarding-school begins 
 next week. The prospectus has been sent to our 
 house. One of the regulations is, ' Young ladies 
 are not allowed to cross their benders in school ' ! 
 
A TALE. 57 
 
 Papa says he never heard them called so before. 
 Old Mrs. Plainfield is gone at last. Just before 
 she died, her Irish chamber-maid asked her if she 
 wanted to be buried with her false teeth in ! 
 There has not been a single new engagement 
 since you went away. But somebody asked me 
 the other day if you were engaged to Mr. Pills- 
 bury. I was very angry. Pillsbury, indeed ! 
 He is old enough to be your father ! 
 
 " What a long, rambling letter I am writing 
 you ! and only because you will be so naughty 
 as to stay away and leave me all alone. If you 
 could have seen the moon last night ! But what 
 a goose I am ! as if you did not see it ! Was 
 it not glorious ? You cannot imagine, dearest, 
 how every hour in the day I wish you were here 
 with me. I know you would sympathize with 
 all my feelings, which Hester does not at all. 
 For, if I admire the moon, she says I am roman- 
 tic, and, for her part, if there is any thing she 
 despises, it is the moon ! and that she prefers 
 a snug, warm bed (O, horrible !) to all the moons 
 in the universe ! " 
 
58 KAVANAGH, 
 
 XIII. 
 
 THE events mentioned in this letter were the 
 principal ones that occurred during the winter. 
 The case of Billy Wilmerdings grew quite 
 desperate. In vain did his father threaten and 
 the school-master expostulate ; he was only the 
 more sullen and stubborn. In vain did his 
 mother represent to his weary mind, that, if he 
 did not study, the boys who knew the dead 
 languages would throw stones at him in the street ; 
 he only answered that he should like to see them 
 try it. Till, finally, having lost many of his 
 illusions, and having even discovered that his 
 father was not the greatest man in the world, 
 on the breaking up of the ice in the river, to his 
 own infinite relief and that of the whole village, 
 he departed on a coasting trip in a fore-and-aft 
 schooner, which constituted the entire navigation 
 of Fairmeadow. 
 
A TALE. 59 
 
 Mr. Churchill had really put up in his study the 
 old white, wine-glass-shaped pulpit. It served 
 as a play-house for his children, who, whether 
 in it or out of it, daily preached to his heart, 
 and were a living illustration of the way to enter 
 into the kingdom of heaven. Moreover, he him- 
 self made use of it externally as a note-book, 
 recording his many meditations with a pencil on 
 the white panels. The following will serve as 
 a specimen of this pulpit eloquence : 
 
 Morality without religion is only a kind of 
 dead-reckoning, an endeavour to find our place 
 on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we 
 have run, but without any observation of the 
 heavenly bodies. 
 
 Many readers judge of the power of a book 
 by the shock it gives their feelings, as some 
 savage tribes determine the power of muskets by 
 their recoil ; that being considered best which 
 fairly prostrates the purchaser. 
 
 Men of genius are often dull and inert in 
 society ; as the blazing meteor, when it descends 
 to earth, is only a stone. 
 
60 KAVANAGH, 
 
 The natural alone is permanent. Fantastic 
 idols may be worshipped for a while ; but at 
 length they are overturned by the continual and 
 silent progress of Truth, as the grim statues 
 of Copan have been pushed from their pedestals 
 by the growth of forest-trees, whose seeds were 
 sown by the wind in the ruined walls. 
 
 The every-day cares and duties, which men 
 call drudgery, are the weights and counterpoises 
 of the clock of time, giving its pendulum a true 
 vibration, and its hands a regular motion ; and 
 when they cease to hang upon the wheels, the 
 pendulum no longer swings, the hands no longer 
 move, the clock stands still. 
 
 The same object, seen from the three differ- 
 ent points of view, the Past, the Present, and 
 the Future, often exhibits three different faces 
 to us ; like those sign-boards over shop doors, 
 which represent the face of a lion as we ap- 
 proach, of a man when we are in front, and of 
 an ass when we have passed. 
 
 In character, in manners, in style, in all things, 
 the supreme excellence is simplicity. 
 
A TALE. 61 
 
 With many readers, brilliancy of style passes 
 for affluence of thought ; they mistake buttercups 
 in the grass for immeasurable gold mines under 
 ground. 
 
 The motives and purposes of authors are not 
 always so pure and high, as, in the enthusiasm 
 of youth, we sometimes imagine. To many the 
 trumpet of fame is nothing but a tin horn to call 
 them home, like laborers from the field, at dinner- 
 time ; and they think themselves lucky to get the 
 dinner. 
 
 The rays of happiness, like those of light, are 
 colorless when unbroken. 
 
 Critics are sentinels in the grand army of 
 letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers 
 and reviews, to challenge every new author. 
 
 The country is lyric, the town dramatic. 
 When mingled, they make the most perfect 
 musical drama. . 
 
 Our passions never wholly die ; but in the 
 last cantos of life's romantic epos, they rise up 
 
62 KAVANAGH, 
 
 again and do battle, like some of Ariosto's he- 
 roes, who have already been quietly interred, 
 and ought to be turned to dust. 
 
 This country is not priest-ridden, but press- 
 ridden. 
 
 Some critics have the habit of rowing up 
 the Heliconian rivers with their backs turned, 
 so as to see the landscape precisely as the poet 
 did not see it. Others see faults in a book much 
 larger than the book itself ; as Sancho Panza, 
 with his eyes blinded, beheld from his wooden 
 horse the earth no larger than a grain of mus- 
 tard-seed, and the men and women on it as large 
 as hazel-nuts. 
 
 Like an inundation of the Indus is the course 
 of Time. We look for the homes of our child- 
 hood, they are gone ; for the friends of our child- 
 hood, they are gone. The loves and animosities 
 of youth, where are they ? Swept away like the 
 camps that had been pitched in the sandy bed 
 of the river. 
 
 As no saint can be canonized until the Devil's 
 
A TALE. 63 
 
 Advocate has exposed all his evil deeds, and 
 showed why he should not be made a saint, so no 
 poet can take his station among the gods until 
 the critics have said all that can be said against 
 him. 
 
 It is curious to note the old sea-margins of 
 human thought ! Each subsiding century reveals 
 some new mystery ; we build where monsters 
 used to hide themselves. 
 
64 KAVANAGH, 
 
 XIV. 
 
 AT length the Spring came, and brought the 
 birds, and the flowers, and Mr. Kavanagh, the 
 new clergyman, who was ordained with all the 
 pomp and ceremony usual on such occasions. 
 The opening of the season furnished also the 
 theme of his first discourse, which some of the 
 congregation thought very beautiful, and others 
 very incomprehensible. 
 
 Ah, how wonderful is the advent of the 
 Spring ! the great annual miracle of the blos- 
 soming of Aaron's rod, repeated on myriads and 
 myriads of branches ! the gentle progression 
 and growth of herbs, flowers, trees, gentle, 
 and yet irrepressible, which no force can stay, 
 no violence restrain, like love, that wins its way 
 and cannot be withstood by any human power, 
 because itself is divine power. If Spring came 
 
A TALE. 65 
 
 but once in a century, instead of once a year, 
 or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, 
 and not in silence, what wonder and expectation 
 would there be in all hearts to behold the mi- 
 raculous change ! 
 
 But now the silent succession suggests nothing 
 but necessity. To most men, only the cessation 
 of the miracle would be miraculous, and the per- 
 petual exercise of God's power seems less won- 
 derful than its withdrawal would be. We are 
 like children who are astonished and delighted 
 only by the second-hand of the clock, not by 
 the hour-hand. 
 
 Such was the train of thought with which 
 Kavanagh commenced his sermon. And then, 
 with deep solemnity and emotion, he proceeded 
 to speak of the Spring of the soul, as from its 
 cheerless wintry distance it turns nearer and 
 nearer to the great Sun, and clothes its dry and 
 withered branches anew with leaves and blossoms, 
 unfolded from within itself, beneath the pene- 
 trating and irresistible influence. 
 
 While delivering the discourse, Kavanagh had 
 not succeeded so entirely in abstracting him- 
 self from all outward things as not to note in 
 some degree its effect upon his hearers. As in 
 5 
 
66 KAVANAGH, 
 
 modern times no applause is permitted in our 
 churches, however moved the audience may be, 
 and, consequently, no one dares wave his hat and 
 shout, u Orthodox Chrysostom ! Thirteenth 
 Apostle ! Worthy the Priesthood ! " as was 
 done in the days of the Christian Fathers ; and, 
 moreover, as no one after church spoke to him 
 of his sermon, or of any thing else, he went 
 home with rather a heavy heart, and a feeling 
 of discouragement. One thing had cheered and 
 consoled him. It was the pale countenance of 
 a young girl, whose dark eyes had been fixed 
 upon him during the whole discourse with un- 
 flagging interest and attention. She sat alone 
 in a pew near the pulpit. It was Alice Archer. 
 Ah ! could he have known how deeply sank his 
 words into that simple heart, he might have 
 shuddered with another kind of fear than that 
 of not moving his audience sufficiently ! 
 
A TALE. 67 
 
 OF THE 
 
 innVEHSITY 
 
 XV. 
 
 ON the following morning Kavanagh sat musing 
 upon his worldly affairs, and upon various lit- 
 tle household arrangements which it would be 
 necessary for him to make. To aid him in 
 these, he had taken up the village paper, and 
 was running over the columns of advertisements, 
 those narrow and crowded thoroughfares, in 
 which the wants and wishes of humanity display 
 themselves like mendicants without disguise. His 
 eye ran hastily over the advantageous offers 
 of the cheap tailors and the dealers in patent 
 medicines. He wished neither to be clothed 
 nor cured. In one place he saw that a young 
 lady, perfectly competent, desired to form a 
 class of young mothers and nurses, and to in- 
 struct them in the art of talking to infants so 
 as to interest and amuse them ; and in another, 
 
68 KAVANAGH, 
 
 that the firemen of Fairmeadow wished well to 
 those hostile editors who had called them gam- 
 blers, drunkards, and rioters, and hoped that they 
 might be spared from that great fire which they - 
 were told could never be extinguished ! Finally 
 his eye rested on the advertisement of a carpet 
 warehouse, in which the one-price system was 
 strictly adhered to. It was farther stated that a 
 discount would be made u to clergymen on small 
 salaries, feeble churches, and charitable institu- 
 tions." Thinking that this was doubtless the 
 place for one who united in himself two of these 
 qualifications for a discount, with a smile on 
 his lips, he took his hat and sallied forth into 
 the street. 
 
 A few days previous, Kavanagh had discovered 
 in the tower of the church a vacant room, which 
 he had immediately determined to take possession 
 of, and to convert into a study. From this 
 retreat, through the four oval windows, fronting 
 the four corners of the heavens, he could look 
 down upon the streets, the roofs and gardens of 
 the village, on the winding river, the meadows, 
 the farms, the distant blue mountains. Here 
 he could sit and meditate, in that peculiar sense 
 of seclusion and spiritual elevation, that entire 
 
A TALE. 
 
 separation from the world below, which a cham- 
 ber in a tower always gives. Here, uninter- 
 rupted and aloof from all intrusion, he could 
 pour his heart into those discourses, with which 
 he hoped to reach and move the hearts of his 
 parishioners. 
 
 It was to furnish this retreat, that he went forth 
 on the Monday morning after his first sermon. 
 He was not long in procuring the few things 
 needed, the carpet, the table, the chairs, the 
 shelves for books ; and was returning thought- 
 fully homeward, when his eye was caught by a 
 sign-board on the corner of the street, inscribed 
 " Moses Merry weather, Dealer in Singing Birds, 
 foreign and domestic." He saw also a whole 
 chamber window transformed into a cage, in 
 which sundry canary-birds, and others of gayer 
 plumage, were jargoning together, like people 
 in the market-places of foreign towns. At the 
 sight of these old favorites, a long slumbering 
 passion awoke within him ; and he straightway 
 ascended the dark wooden staircase, with the 
 intent of enlivening his solitary room with the 
 vivacity and songs of these captive ballad-singers. 
 
 In a moment he found himself in a little room 
 hung round with cages, roof and walls ; full of 
 
70 KAVANAGH, 
 
 sunshine ; full of twitterings, cooings, and flutter- 
 ings ; full of downy odors, suggesting nests, and 
 dovecots, and distant islands inhabited only by 
 birds. The taxidermist the Selkirk of the 
 sunny island was not there ; but a young lady 
 of noble mien, who was looking at an English 
 goldfinch in a square cage with a portico, turned 
 upon him, as he entered, a fair and beautiful face, 
 shaded by long, light locks, in which the sunshine 
 seemed entangled, as among the boughs of trees. 
 That face he had never seen before, and yet it 
 seemed familiar to him ; and the added light in 
 her large, celestial eyes, and the almost imper- 
 ceptible expression that passed over her face, 
 showed that she knew who he was. 
 
 At the same moment the taxidermist presented 
 himself, coming from an inner room ; a little 
 man in gray, with spectacles upon his nose, 
 holding in his hands, with wings and legs drawn 
 close and smoothly together, like the green husks 
 of the maize ear, a beautiful carrier-pigeon, who 
 turned up first one bright eye and then the other, 
 as if asking, "What are you going to do with 
 me now ? " This silent inquiry was soon an- 
 swered by Mr. Merryweather, who said to the 
 young lady, 
 
A TALE. 71 
 
 " Here, Miss Vaughan, is the best carrier- 
 pigeon in my whole collection. The real Co- 
 lumba Tabullaria. He is about three years 
 old, as you can see by his wattle." 
 
 "A very pretty bird," said the lady; "and 
 how shall I train it ? " 
 
 "O, that is very easy. You have only to keep 
 it shut up for a few days, well fed and well 
 treated. Then take it in an open cage to the 
 place you mean it to fly to, and do the same 
 
 thing there. Afterwards it will give you no 
 * 
 
 trouble ; it will always fly between those two 
 places." 
 
 " That, certainly, is not very difficult. At all 
 events, I will make the trial. You may send the 
 bird home to me. On what shall I feed it ? " 
 
 " On any kind of grain, barley and buck- 
 wheat are best ; and remember to let it have a 
 plenty of gravel in the bottom of its cage." 
 
 " I will not forget. Send me the bird to-day, 
 if possible." 
 
 With these words she departed, much too 
 soon for Kavanagh, who was charmed with her 
 form, her face, her voice ; and who, when left 
 alone with the little taxidermist, felt that the 
 momentary fascination of the place was gone. 
 
72 KAVANAGH, 
 
 He heard no longer the singing of the birds ; he 
 saw no longer their gay plumage ; and having 
 speedily made the purchase of a canary and a 
 cage, he likewise departed, thinking of the carrier- 
 pigeons of Bagdad, and the columbaries of Egypt, 
 stationed at fixed intervals as relays and resting- 
 places for the flying post. With an indefinable 
 feeling of sadness, too, came wafted like a per- 
 fume through his memory those tender, melan- 
 choly lines of Maria del Occidente : 
 
 " And as the dove, to far Palmyra flying, 
 
 From where her native founts of Antioch beam, 
 Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing, 
 Lights sadly at the desert's bitter stream j 
 
 So many a soul, o'er life's drear desert faring, 
 Love's pure, congenial spring unfound, unquaffed, 
 
 Suffers, recoils, then, thirsty and despairing 
 Of what it would, descends and sips the nearest draught." 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Merry weather, left to him- 
 self, walked about his aviary, musing, and talking 
 to his birds. Finally he paused before the tin 
 cage of a gray African parrot, between which 
 and himself there was a strong family likeness, 
 and, giving it his finger to peck and perch upon, 
 conversed with it in that peculiar dialect with 
 
A TALE. 73 
 
 which it had often made vocal the distant groves 
 of Zanguebar. He then withdrew to the inner 
 room, where he resumed his labor of stuffing a 
 cardinal grossbeak, saying to himself between 
 whiles, 
 
 " I wonder what Miss Cecilia Vaughan means 
 to do with a carrier-pigeon ! " 
 
 Some mysterious connection he had evidently 
 established already between this pigeon and Mr. 
 Kavanagh ; for, continuing his revery, he said, 
 half aloud, 
 
 " Of course she would never think of marrying 
 a poor clergyman ! " 
 
74 KAVANAGH, 
 
 XVI. 
 
 THE old family mansion of the Vaughans 
 stood a little out of town, in the midst of a 
 pleasant farm. The county road was not near 
 enough to annoy ; and the rattling wheels and 
 little clouds of dust seemed like friendly saluta- 
 tions from travellers as they passed. They 
 spoke of safety and companionship, and took 
 away all loneliness from the solitude. 
 
 On three sides, the farm was inclosed by 
 willow and alder hedges, and the flowing wall 
 of a river ; nearer the house were groves 
 clear of all underwood, with rocky knolls, and 
 breezy bowers of beech ; and afar off the blue 
 hills broke the horizon, creating secret longings 
 for what lay beyond them, and filling the mind 
 with pleasant thoughts of Prince Rasselas and the 
 Happy Valley. 
 
A TALE. 75 
 
 The house was one of the few old houses still 
 standing in New England; a large, square 
 building, with a portico in front, whose door 
 in Summer time stood open from morning until 
 night. A pleasing stillness reigned about it ; 
 and soft gusts of pine-embalmed air, and distant 
 cawings from the crow-haunted mountains, filled 
 its airy and ample halls. 
 
 In this old-fashioned house had Cecilia Vaughan 
 grown up to maidenhood. The travelling shad- 
 ows of the clouds on the hill-sides, the sudden 
 Summer wind, that lifted the languid leaves, and 
 rushed from field to field, from grove to grove, 
 the forerunner of the rain, and, most of all, 
 the mysterious mountain, whose coolness was a 
 perpetual invitation to her, and whose silence a 
 perpetual fear, fostered her dreamy and poetic 
 temperament. Not less so did the reading of 
 poetry and romance in the long, silent, solitary 
 winter evenings. Her mother had been dead for 
 many years, and the memory of that mother had 
 become almost a religion to her. She recalled 
 it incessantly ; and the reverential love, which 
 it inspired, completely filled her soul with melan- 
 choly delight. Her father was a kindly old 
 man ; a judge in one of the courts ; digni- 
 
76 KAVANAGH, 
 
 fied, affable, somewhat bent by his legal erudi- 
 tion, as a shelf is by the weight of the books 
 upon it. His papers encumbered the study 
 table ; his law books, the study floor. They 
 seemed to shut out from his mind the lovely 
 daughter, who had grown up to womanhood 
 by his side, but almost without his recognition. 
 Always affectionate, always indulgent, he left 
 her to walk alone, without his stronger thought 
 and firmer purpose to lean upon ; and though her 
 education had been, on this account, somewhat 
 desultory, and her imagination indulged in many 
 dreams and vagaries, yet, on the whole, the result 
 had been more favorable than in many cases where 
 the process of instruction has been too diligently 
 carried on, and where, as sometimes on the roofs 
 of farm-houses and barns, the scaffolding has 
 been left to deform the building. 
 
 Cecilia's bosom-friend at school was Alice 
 Archer ; and, after they left school, the love be- 
 tween them, and consequently the letters, rather 
 increased than diminished. These two young 
 hearts found not only a delight, but a necessity 
 in pouring forth their thoughts and feelings to 
 each other ; and it was to facilitate this inter- 
 communication, for whose exigencies the ordi- 
 
A TALE. 77 
 
 nary methods were now found inadequate, that 
 the carrier-pigeon had been purchased. He was 
 to be the flying post ; their bed-rooms the dove- 
 cots, the pure and friendly columbaria. 
 
 Endowed with youth, beauty, talent, fortune, 
 and, moreover, with that indefinable fascination 
 which has no name, Cecilia Vaughan was not 
 without lovers, avowed and unavowed ; young 
 men, who made an ostentatious display of their 
 affection; boys, who treasured it in their bo- 
 soms, as something indescribably sweet and pre- 
 cious, perfuming all the chambers of the heart with 
 its celestial fragrance. Whenever she returned 
 from a visit to the city, some unknown youth 
 of elegant manners and varnished leather boots 
 was sure to hover round the village inn for a few 
 days, was known to visit the Vaughans assid- 
 uously, and then silently to disappear, and be 
 seen no more. Of course, nothing could be 
 known of the secret history of such individuals ; 
 but shrewd surmises were formed as to their 
 designs and their destinies ; till finally, any well- 
 dressed stranger, lingering in the village without 
 ostensible business, was set down as " one of 
 Miss Vaughan's lovers." 
 
 In all this, what a contrast was there between 
 
78 KAVANAGH, 
 
 the two young friends ! The wealth of one and 
 the poverty of the other were not so strikingly 
 at variance, as this affluence and refluence of 
 love. To the one, so much was given that she 
 became regardless of the gift ; from the other, so 
 much withheld, that, if possible, she exaggerated 
 its importance. 
 
A TALE. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 IN addition to these transient lovers, who were 
 but birds of passage, winging their way, in an 
 incredibly short space of time, from the torrid 
 to the frigid zone, there was in the village a 
 domestic and resident adorer, whose love for 
 himself, for Miss Vaughan, and for the beauti- 
 ful, had transformed his name from Hiram A. 
 Hawkins to H. Adolphus Hawkins. He was 
 a dealer in English linens and carpets ; a pro- 
 fession which of itself fills the mind with ideas 
 of domestic comfort. His waistcoats were made 
 like Lord Melbourne's in the illustrated English 
 papers, and his shiny hair went off to the left 
 in a superb sweep, like the hand-rail of a ban- 
 nister. He wore many rings on his fingers, 
 and several breast-pins and gold chains dis- 
 posed about his person. On all his bland physi- 
 
80 KAVANAGH, 
 
 ognomy was stamped, as on some of his linens, 
 u Soft finish for family use." Every thing 
 about him spoke the lady's man. He was, in 
 fact, a perfect ring-dove ; and, like the rest of 
 his species, always walked up to the female, 
 and, bowing his head, swelled out his white crop, 
 and uttered a very plaintive murmur. 
 
 Moreover, Mr. Hiram Adolphus Hawkins 
 was a poet, so much a poet, that, as his sister 
 frequently remarked, he " spoke blank verse 
 in the bosom of his family." The general 
 tone of his productions was sad, desponding, 
 perhaps slightly morbid. How could it be other- 
 wise with the writings of one who had never 
 been the world's friend, nor the world his ? 
 who looked upon himself as " a pyramid of 
 mind on the dark desert of despair "? and who, 
 at the age of twenty-five, had drunk the bitter 
 draught of life to the dregs, and dashed the 
 goblet down ? His productions were published 
 in the Poet's Corner of the Fairmeadow Adver- 
 tiser ; and it was a relief to know, that, in private 
 life, as his sister remarked, he was " by no 
 means the censorious and moody person some 
 of his writings might imply." 
 
 Such was the personage who assumed to 
 
A TALE. 
 
 81 
 
 himself the perilous position of Miss Vaughan's 
 permanent admirer. He imagined that it was 
 impossible for any woman to look upon him and 
 not love him. Accordingly, he paraded him- 
 self at his shop-door as she passed ; he pa- 
 raded himself at the corners of the streets ; 
 he paraded himself at the church-steps on Sun- 
 day. He spied her from the window ; he sallied 
 from the door ; he followed her with his eyes ; 
 he followed her with his whole august person ; 
 he passed her and repassed her, and turned 
 back to gaze ; he lay in wait with dejected 
 countenance and desponding air ; he persecuted 
 her with his looks ; he pretended that their 
 souls could comprehend each other without 
 words ; and whenever her lovers were alluded 
 to in his presence, he gravely declared, as one 
 who had reason to know, that, if Miss Vaughan 
 ever married, it would be some one of gigantic 
 intellect ! 
 
 Of these persecutions Cecilia was for a long 
 time the unconscious victim. She saw this 
 individual, with rings and strange waistcoats, per- 
 forming his gyrations before her, but did not 
 suspect that she was the centre of attraction, 
 not imagining that any man would begin his 
 6 
 
82 KAVANAGH, 
 
 wooing with such outrages. Gradually the truth 
 dawned upon her, and became the source of 
 indescribable annoyance, which was augmented 
 by a series of anonymous letters, written in a 
 female hand, and setting forth the excellences 
 of a certain mysterious relative," his modesty, 
 his reserve, his extreme delicacy, his talent for 
 poetry, rendered authentic by extracts from his 
 papers, made, of course, without the slightest 
 knowledge or suspicion on his part. Whence 
 came these sibylline leaves ? At first Cecilia 
 could not divine ; but, ere long, her woman's in- 
 stinct traced them to the thin and nervous hand of 
 the poet's sister. This surmise was confirmed by 
 her maid, who asked the boy that brought them. 
 It was with one of these missives in her hand 
 that Cecilia entered Mrs. Archer's house, after 
 purchasing the carrier-pigeon. Unannounced she 
 entered, and walked up the narrow and imper- 
 fectly lighted stairs to Alice's bed-room, that 
 little sanctuary draped with white, that colum- 
 barium lined with warmth, and softness, and 
 silence. Alice was not there ; but the chair 
 by the window, the open volume of poems on 
 the table, the note to Cecilia by its side, and 
 the ink not yet dry in the pen, were like the 
 
A TALE. 83 
 
 vibration of a bough, when the bird has just 
 left it, like the rising of the grass, when the 
 foot has just pressed it. In a moment she re- 
 turned. She had been down to her mother, 
 who sat talking, talking, talking, with an old 
 friend in the parlour below, even as these young 
 friends were talking together, in the bed-room 
 above. Ah, how different were their themes ! 
 Death and Love, apples of Sodom, that 
 crumble to ashes at a touch, golden fruits of 
 the Hesperides, golden fruits of Paradise, fra- 
 grant, ambrosial, perennial ! 
 
 " I have just been writing to you," said Alice ; 
 " I wanted so much to see you this morning ! " 
 
 cc Why this morning in particular ? Has any 
 thing happened ? " 
 
 " Nothing, only I had such a longing to see 
 you ! " 
 
 And, seating herself in a low chair by Cecilia's 
 side, she laid her head upon the shoulder of her 
 friend, who, taking one of her pale, thin hands 
 in both her own, silently kissed her forehead 
 again and again. 
 
 Alice was not aware, that, in the words she 
 uttered, there was the slightest shadow of un- 
 truth. And yet had nothing happened ? Was 
 
84 KAVANAGH, 
 
 it nothing, that among her thoughts a new thought 
 had risen, like a star, whose pale effulgence, 
 mingled with the common daylight, was not 
 yet distinctly visible even to herself, but would 
 grow brighter as the sun grew lower, and the 
 rosy twilight darker ? Was it nothing, that a 
 new fountain of affection had suddenly sprung 
 up within her, which she mistook for the fresh- 
 ening and overflowing of the old fountain of 
 friendship, that hitherto had kept the lowland 
 landscape of her life so green, but now, being 
 flooded by more affection, was not to cease, 
 but only to disappear in the greater tide, and 
 flow unseen beneath it ? Yet so it was ; and 
 this stronger yearning this unappeasable de- 
 sire for her friend was only the tumultuous 
 swelling of a heart, that as yet knows not its 
 own secret. 
 
 u I am so glad to see you, Cecilia ! " she con- 
 tinued. u You are so beautiful ! I love so 
 much to sit and look at you ! Ah, how I wish 
 Heaven had made me as tall, and strong, and 
 beautiful as you are ! " 
 
 " You little flatterer ! What an affectionate, 
 lover-like friend you are ! What have you been 
 doing all the morning ? " 
 
A TALE. 
 
 85 
 
 " Looking out of the window, thinking of you, 
 and writing you this letter, to beg you to come 
 and see me." 
 
 " And I have been buying a carrier-pigeon, to 
 fly between us, and carry all our letters." 
 
 " That will be delightful." 
 
 <c He is to be sent home to-day ; and after he 
 gets accustomed to my room, I shall send him 
 here, to get acquainted with yours ; a lachimo 
 in my Imogen's bed-chamber, to spy out its 
 secrets." 
 
 " If he sees Cleopatra in these white curtains, 
 and silver Cupids in these andirons, he will have 
 your imagination." 
 
 " He will see the book with the leaf turned 
 down, and you asleep, and tell me all about 
 you." 
 
 " A carrier-pigeon ! What a charming idea ! 
 and how like you to think of it ! " 
 
 " But to-day I have been obliged to bring my 
 own letters. I have some more sibylline leaves 
 from my anonymous correspondent, in laud and 
 exaltation of her modest relative, who speaks 
 blank verse in the bosom of his family. I have 
 brought them to read you some extracts, and to 
 take your advice ; for, really and seriously, this 
 must be stopped. It has grown too annoying." 
 
86 KAVANAGH, 
 
 " How much love you have offered you ! " 
 said Alice, sighing. 
 
 " Yes, quite too much of this kind. On my 
 way here, I saw the modest relative, standing at 
 the corner of the street, hanging his head in this 
 way." 
 
 And she imitated the melancholy Hiram Adol- 
 phus, and the young friends laughed. 
 
 " I hope you did not notice him ? " resumed 
 Alice. 
 
 " Certainly not. But what do you suppose he 
 'did ? As soon as he saw me, he began to walk 
 backward down the street only a short distance in 
 front of me, staring at me most impertinently. 
 Of course, I took no notice of this strange con- 
 duct. I felt myself blushing to the eyes with in- 
 dignation, and yet could hardly suppress my 
 desire to laugh." 
 
 u If you had laughed, he would have taken it 
 for an encouragement ; and I have no doubt it 
 would have brought on the catastrophe." 
 
 u And that would have ended the matter. I 
 half wish I had laughed." 
 
 " But think of the immortal glory of marrying 
 a poet ! " 
 
 " And of inscribing on my cards, Mrs. Hiram 
 Adolphus Hawkins ! " 
 
A TALE. 87 
 
 " A few days ago, I went to buy something at 
 his shop ; and, leaning over the counter, he asked 
 me if I had seen the sun set the evening before, 
 adding, that it was gorgeous, and that the grass 
 and trees were of a beautiful Paris green ! " 
 
 And again the young friends gave way to their 
 mirth. 
 
 " One thing, dear Alice, you must consent to 
 do for me. You must write to Miss Martha 
 Amelia, the author of all these epistles, and tell 
 her very plainly how indelicate her conduct is, 
 and how utterly useless all such proceedings will 
 prove in effecting her purpose." 
 
 u I will write this very day. You shall be no 
 longer persecuted." 
 
 " And now let me give you a few extracts 
 from these wonderful epistles." 
 
 So saying, Cecilia drew forth a small package 
 of three-cornered billets, tied with a bit of pink 
 ribbon. Taking one of them at random, she was 
 on the point of beginning, but paused, as if her 
 attention had been attracted by something out of 
 doors. The sound of passing footsteps was 
 heard on the gravel walk. 
 
 " There goes Mr. Kavanagh," said she, in a 
 half-whisper. 
 
88 KAVANAGH, 
 
 Alice rose suddenly from her low chair at 
 Cecilia's side, and the young friends looked from 
 the window to see the clergyman pass. 
 
 u How handsome he is ! " said Alice, invol- 
 untarily. 
 
 u He is, indeed." 
 
 At that moment Alice started back from the 
 window. Kavanagh had looked up in passing, as 
 if his eye had been drawn by some secret magnet- 
 ism. A bright color flushed the cheek of Alice ; 
 her eyes fell ; but Cecilia continued to look 
 steadily into the street. Kavanagh passed on, 
 and in a few moments was out of sight. 
 
 The two friends stood silent, side by side. 
 
A TALE. 89 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 ARTHUR KAVANAGH was descended from an 
 ancient Catholic family. His ancestors had pur- 
 chased from the Baron Victor of St. Castine a 
 portion of his vast estates, lying upon that wild 
 and wonderful sea-coast of Maine, which, even 
 upon the map, attracts the eye hy its singular and 
 picturesque indentations, and fills the heart of the 
 beholder with something of that delight which 
 throbbed in the veins of Pierre du Gast, when, 
 with a royal charter of the land from the Atlantic 
 to the Pacific, he sailed down the coast in all the 
 pride of one who is to be prince of such a vast 
 domain. Here, in the bosom of the solemn 
 forests, they continued the practice of that faith 
 which had first been planted there by Rasle and 
 St. Castine ; and the little church where they 
 worshipped is still standing, though now as closed 
 
90 KAVANAGH, 
 
 and silent as the graves which surround it, and in 
 which the dust of the Kavanaghs lies buried. 
 
 In these solitudes, in this faith, was Kavanagh 
 born, and grew to childhood, a feeble, delicate 
 boy, watched over by a grave and taciturn father, 
 and a mother who looked upon him with infinite 
 tenderness, as upon a treasure she should not long 
 retain. She walked with him by the sea-side, 
 and spake to him of God, and the mysterious 
 majesty of the ocean, with its tides and tempests. 
 She sat with him on the carpet of golden threads 
 beneath the aromatic pines, and, as the perpetual 
 melancholy sound ran along the rattling boughs, 
 his soul seemed to rise and fall, with a motion and 
 a whisper like those in the branches over him. 
 She taught him his letters from the Lives of the 
 Saints, a volume full of wondrous legends, and 
 illustrated with engravings from pictures by the 
 old masters, which opened to him at once the 
 world of spirits and the world of art ; and both 
 were beautiful. She explained to him the pic- 
 tures ; she read to him the legends, the lives 
 of holy men and women, full of faith and good 
 works, things which ever afterward remained 
 associated together in his mind. Thus holiness 
 of life, and self-renunciation, and devotion to duty, 
 
A TALE. 91 
 
 were early impressed upon his soul. To his 
 quick imagination, the spiritual world became 
 real ; the holy company of the saints stood round 
 about the solitary boy ; his guardian angels led 
 him by the hand by day, and sat by his pillow at 
 night. At times, even, he wished to die, that he 
 might see them and talk with them, and return no 
 more to his weak and weary body. 
 
 Of all the legends of the mysterious book, that 
 which most delighted and most deeply impressed 
 him was the legend of St. Christopher. The pic- 
 ture was from a painting of Paolo Farinato, rep- 
 resenting a figure of gigantic strength and stature, 
 leaning upon a staff, and bearing the infant Christ 
 on his bending shoulders across the rushing 
 river. The legend related, that St. Christopher, 
 being of huge proportions and immense strength, 
 wandered long about the world before his con- 
 version, seeking for the greatest king, and willing 
 to obey no other. After serving various masters, 
 whom he in turn deserted, because each recog- 
 nized by some word or sign another greater than 
 himself, he heard by chance of Christ, the king 
 of heaven and earth, and asked of a holy hermit 
 where he might be found, and how he might serve 
 him. The hermit told him he must fast and 
 
92 KAVANAGH, 
 
 pray ; but the giant replied that if he fasted he 
 should lose his strength, and that he did not know 
 how to pray. Then the hermit told him to take 
 up his abode on the banks of a dangerous moun- 
 tain torrent, where travellers were often drowned 
 in crossing, and to rescue any that might be in 
 peril. The giant obeyed ; and tearing up a palm- 
 tree by the roots for a staff, he took his station by 
 the river's side, and saved many lives. And the 
 Lord looked down from heaven and said, u Be- 
 hold this strong man, who knows not yet the way 
 to worship, but has found the way to serve me ! " 
 And one night he heard the voice of a child, 
 crying in the darkness and saying, " Christo- 
 pher ! come and bear me over the river ! " 
 And he went out, and found the child sitting alone 
 on the margin of the stream ; and taking him upon 
 his shoulders, he waded into the water. Then 
 the wind began to roar, and the waves to rise 
 higher and higher about him, and. his little burden, 
 which at first had seemed so light, grew heavier 
 and heavier as he advanced, and bent his huge 
 shoulders down, and put his life in peril ; so that, 
 when he reached the shore, he said, u Who art 
 thou, O child, that hast weighed upon me with a 
 weight, as if I had borne the whole world upon 
 
A TALE. 
 
 my shoulders ? " And the little 
 u Thou hast borne the whole world 
 shoulders, and Him who created it. I am Christ, 
 whom thou by thy deeds of charity wouldst serve. 
 Thou and thy service are accepted. Plant thy 
 staff in the ground, and it shall blossom and bear 
 fruit ! " With these words, the child vanished 
 away. 
 
 There was something in this beautiful legend 
 that entirely captivated the heart of the boy, 
 and a vague sense of its hidden meaning seemed 
 at times to seize him and control him. Later in 
 life it became more and more evident to him, and 
 remained forever in his mind as a lovely allegory 
 of active charity and a willingness to serve. Like 
 the giant's staff, it blossomed and bore fruit. 
 
 But the time at length came, when his father 
 decreed that he must be sent away to school. It 
 was not meet that his son should be educated as a 
 girl. He must go to the Jesuit college in Can- 
 ada. Accordingly, one bright Summer morning, 
 he departed with his father, on horseback, through 
 those majestic forests that stretch with almost un- 
 broken shadows from the sea to the St. Law- 
 rence, leaving behind him all the endearments of 
 home, and a wound in his mother's heart that 
 
94 KAVANAGH, 
 
 never ceased to ache, a longing, unsatisfied 
 and insatiable, for her absent Arthur, who had 
 gone from her perhaps for ever. 
 
 At college he distinguished himself by his zeal 
 for study, by the docility, gentleness, and gener- 
 osity of his nature. There he was thoroughly 
 trained in the classics, and in the dogmas of that 
 august faith, whose turrets gleam with such crys- 
 talline light, and whose dungeons are so deep, and 
 dark, and terrible. The study of philosophy and 
 theology was congenial to his mind. Indeed, he 
 often laid aside Homer for Parmenides, and 
 turned from the odes of Pindar and Horace to the 
 mystic hymns of Cleanthes and Synesius. 
 
 The uniformity of college life was broken only 
 by the annual visit home in the Summer vacation ; 
 the joyous meeting, the bitter parting ; the long 
 journey to and fro through the grand, solitary, 
 mysterious forest. To his mother these visits 
 were even more precious than to himself; for 
 ever more and more they added to her boundless 
 affection the feeling of pride and confidence and 
 satisfaction, the joy and beauty of a youth un- 
 spotted from the world, and glowing with the en- 
 thusiasm of virtue. 
 
 At length his college days were ended. He 
 
A TALE. 95 
 
 returned home full of youth, full of joy and hope ; 
 but it was only to receive the dying blessings of 
 his mother, who expired in peace, having seen his 
 face once more. Then the house became empty 
 to him. Solitary was the sea-shore, solitary were 
 the woodland walks. But the spiritual world 
 seemed nearer and more real. For affairs he had 
 no aptitude ; and he betook himself again to his 
 philosophic and theological studies. He ponder- 
 ed with fond enthusiasm on the rapturous pages 
 of Molinos and Madame Guy on ; and in a spirit 
 akin to that which wrote, he read the writings of 
 Santa Theresa, which he found among his moth- 
 er's books, the Meditations, the Road to Per- 
 fection, and the Moradas, or Castle of the 
 Soul. She, too, had lingered over those pages 
 with delight, and there were many passages 
 marked by her own hand. Among them was 
 this, which he often repeated to himself in his 
 lonely walks : u O, Life, Life ! how canst thou 
 sustain thyself, being absent from thy Life ? In 
 so great a solitude, in what shalt thou employ thy- 
 self ? What shalt thou do, since all thy deeds 
 are faulty and imperfect ? " 
 
 In such meditations passed many weeks and 
 months. But mingled with them, continually and 
 
96 KAVANAGH, 
 
 ever with more distinctness, arose in his memory 
 from the days of childhood the old tradition of 
 Saint Christopher, the beautiful allegory of 
 humility and labor. He and his service had been 
 accepted, though he would not fast, and had not 
 learned to pray ! It became more and more 
 clear to him, that the life of man consists not in 
 seeing visions, and in dreaming dreams, but in 
 active charity and willing service. 
 
 Moreover, the study of ecclesiastical history 
 awoke within him many strange and dubious 
 thoughts. The books taught him more than their 
 writers meant to teach. It was impossible to 
 read of Athanasius without reading also of Arian ; 
 it was impossible to hear of Calvin without hear- 
 ing of Servetus. Reason began more energeti- 
 cally to vindicate itself ; that Reason, which is a 
 light in darkness, not that which is u a thorn in 
 Revelation's side." The search after Truth and 
 Freedom, both intellectual and spiritual, became 
 a passion in his soul ; and he pursued it until he 
 had left far behind him many dusky dogmas, 
 many antique superstitions, many time-honored 
 observances, which the lips of her alone, who 
 first taught them to him in his childhood, had 
 invested with solemnity and sanctity. 
 
A TALE. 97 
 
 By slow degrees, and not by violent spiritual 
 conflicts, he became a Protestant. He had but 
 passed from one chapel to another in the same 
 vast cathedral. He was still beneath the same 
 ample roof, still heard the same divine service 
 chanted in a different dialect of the same universal 
 language- Out of his old faith he brought with 
 him all he had found in it that was holy and pure 
 and of good report. Not its bigotry, and fanati- 
 cism, and intolerance ; but its zeal, its self-devo- 
 tion, its heavenly aspirations, its human sympa- 
 thies, its endless deeds of charity. Not till after 
 his father's death, however, did he become a 
 clergyman. Then his vocation was manifest to 
 him. He no longer hesitated, but entered upon 
 its many duties and responsibilities, its many 
 trials and discouragements, with the zeal of Peter 
 and the gentleness of John. 
 
98 KAVANAGH, 
 
 XIX. 
 
 A WEEK later, and Kavanagh was installed in 
 his little room in the church- tower. A week 
 later, and the carrier-pigeon was on the wing. 
 A week later, and Martha Amelia's anonymous 
 epistolary eulogies of her relative had ceased 
 for ever. 
 
 Swiftly and silently the Summer advanced, 
 and the following announcement in the Fair- 
 meadow Advertiser proclaimed the hot weather 
 and its alleviations : 
 
 " I have the pleasure of announcing to the 
 Ladies and Gentlemen of Fairmeadow and its 
 vicinity, that my Bath House is now completed, 
 and ready for the reception of those who are 
 disposed to regale themselves in a luxury peculiar 
 to the once polished Greek and noble Roman. 
 
A TALE. 99 
 
 u To the Ladies I will say, that Tuesday of 
 each week will be appropriated to their exclu- 
 sive benefit ; the white flag will be the signal ; 
 and I assure the Ladies, that due respect shall 
 be scrupulously observed, and that they shall 
 be guarded from each vagrant foot and each 
 licentious eye. 
 
 EDWARD DIMPLE." 
 
 Moreover, the village was enlivened by the 
 usual travelling shows, the wax-work figures 
 representing Eliza Wharton and the Salem 
 Tragedy, to which clergymen and their families 
 were u respectfully invited, free on presenting 
 their cards " ; a stuffed shark, that had eaten 
 the exhibitor's father in Lynn bay ; the me- 
 nagerie, with its loud music and its roars of rage ; 
 the circus, with its tan and tinsel, its faded 
 columbine and melancholy clown ; and, finally, 
 the standard drama, in which Elder Evans, like 
 an ancient Spanish Bululu, impersonated all the 
 principal male characters, and was particularly 
 imposing in lago and the Moor, having half his 
 face lamp-blacked, and turning now the luminous, 
 now the eclipsed side to the audience, as the 
 exigencies of the dialogue demanded. 
 
100 KAVANAGH, 
 
 There was also a great Temperance Jubilee, 
 with a procession, in which was conspicuous a 
 large horse, whose shaven tail was adorned with 
 gay ribbons, and whose rider bore a banner with 
 the device, " Shaved in the Cause " ! More- 
 over, the Grand Junction Railroad was opened 
 through the town, running in one direction to the 
 ciiy, and in the other into unknown northern 
 regions, stringing the white villages like pearls 
 upon its black thread. By this, the town lost 
 much of its rural quiet and seclusion. The in- 
 habitants became restless and ambitious. They 
 were in constant excitement and alarm, like 
 children in story-books hidden away somewhere 
 by an ogre, who visits them regularly every 
 day and night, and occasionally devours one of 
 them for a meal. 
 
 Nevertheless, most of the inhabitants con- 
 sidered the railroad a great advantage to the 
 village. Several ladies were heard to say that 
 Fairmeadow had grown quite metropolitan ; and 
 Mrs. Wilmerdings, who suffered under a chronic 
 suspension of the mental faculties, had a vague 
 notion, probably connected with the profession 
 of her son, that it was soon to become a sea- 
 port. 
 
A TALE. 101 
 
 In the fields and woods, meanwhile, there were 
 other signs and signals of the Summer. The 
 darkening foliage ; the embrowning grain ; the 
 golden dragon-fly haunting the blackberry-bushes ; 
 the cawing crows, that looked down from the 
 mountain on the corn-field, and waited day after 
 day for the scarecrow to finish his work and 
 depart ; and the smoke of far-off burning woods, 
 that pervaded the air and hung in purple haze 
 about the summits of the mountains, these were 
 the avant-couriers and attendants of the hot 
 August. 
 
 Kavanagh had now completed the first great 
 cycle of parochial visits. He had seen the 
 Vaughans, the Archers, the Churchills, and also 
 the Hawkinses and the Wilmerdingses, and many 
 more. With Mr. Churchill he had become 
 intimate. They had many points of contact 
 and sympathy. They walked together on leisure 
 afternoons ; they sat together through long Sum- 
 mer evenings ; they discoursed with friendly 
 zeal on various topics of literature, religion, 
 and morals. 
 
 Moreover, he worked assiduously at his ser- 
 mons. He preached the doctrines of Christ. 
 He preached holiness, self-denial, love ; and his 
 
102 KAVANAGH, 
 
 hearers remarked that he almost invariably took 
 his texts from the Evangelists, as much as 
 possible from the words of Christ, and seldom 
 from Paul, or the Old Testament. He did not 
 so much denounce vice, as inculcate virtue ; 
 he did not deny, but affirm ; he did not lacerate 
 the hearts of his hearers with doubt and dis- 
 belief, but consoled, and comforted, and healed 
 them with faith. 
 
 The only danger was that he might advance 
 too far, and leave his congregation behind him ; 
 as a piping shepherd, who, charmed with his 
 own music, walks over the flowery mead, not 
 perceiving that his tardy flock is lingering far 
 behind, more intent upon cropping the thymy 
 food around them, than upon listening to the 
 celestial harmonies that are gradually dying away 
 in the distance. 
 
 His words were always kindly ; he brought 
 no railing accusation against any man ; he dealt 
 in no exaggerations nor over-statements. But 
 while he was gentle, he was firm. He did not 
 refrain from reprobating intemperance because 
 one of his deacons owned a distillery ; nor war, 
 because another had a contract for supplying the 
 army with muskets ; nor slavery, because one 
 
A TALE. 103 
 
 of the great men of the village slammed his 
 pew-door, and left the church with a grand air, 
 as much as to say, that all that sort of thing 
 would not do, and the clergy had better confine 
 itself to abusing the sins of the Hindoos, and 
 let our domestic institutions alone. 
 
 In affairs ecclesiastical he had not suggested 
 many changes. One that he had much at heart 
 was, that the partition wall between parish and 
 church should be quietly taken down, so that all 
 should sit together at the Supper of the Lord. 
 He also desired that the organist should relinquish 
 the old and pernicious habit of preluding with 
 triumphal marches, and running his fingers at 
 random over the keys of his instrument, playing 
 scraps of secular music very slowly to make 
 them sacred, and substitute instead some of the 
 beautiful symphonies of Pergolesi, Palestrina, and 
 Sebastian Bach. 
 
 He held that sacred melodies were becoming 
 to sacred themes ; and did not wish, that, in his 
 church, as in some of the French Canadian 
 churches, the holy profession of religion should 
 be sung to the air of " When one is dead 't is for 
 a long time," the commandments, aspirations for 
 heaven, and the necessity of thinking of one's sal- 
 
104 KAVANAGH, 
 
 vation, to " The Follies of Spain," " Louisa was 
 sleeping in a grove," or a grand " March of the 
 French Cavalry." 
 
 The study in the tower was delightful. There 
 sat the young apostle, and meditated the great 
 design and. purpose of his life, the removal of all 
 prejudice, and uncharitableness, and persecution, 
 and the union of all sects into one church univer- 
 sal. Sects themselves he would not destroy, 
 but sectarianism ; for sects were to him only as 
 separate converging roads, leading all to the 
 same celestial city of peace. As he sat alone, 
 and thought of these things, he heard the great 
 bell boom above him, and remembered the 
 ages when in all Christendom there was but one 
 Church ; when bells were anointed, baptized, and 
 prayed for, that, wheresoever those holy bells 
 should sound, all deceits of Satan, all danger of 
 whirlwinds, thunders, lightnings, and tempests, 
 might be driven away, that devotion might in- 
 crease in every Christian when he heard them, 
 and that the Lord would sanctify them with his 
 Holy Spirit, and infuse into them the heavenly 
 dew of the Holy Ghost. He thought of the great 
 bell Guthlac, which an abbot of Croyland gave to 
 his monastery, and of the six others given by his 
 
A TALE. 105 
 
 successor, so musical, that, when they all rang 
 together, as Ingulphus affirms, there was no ringing 
 in England equal to it. As he listened, the bell 
 seemed to breathe upon the air such clangorous 
 sentences as, 
 
 "Laudo Deum venim, plebem voco, congrego clerum, 
 Defunctos ploro, nimbum fugo, festaque honoro." 
 
 Possibly, also, at times, it interrupted his studies 
 and meditations with other words than these. 
 Possibly it sang into his ears, as did the bells 
 of Varennes into the ears of Panurge, u Marry 
 thee, marry thee, marry, marry ; if thou shouldst 
 marry, marry, marry, thou shalt find good therein, 
 therein, therein, so marry, marry." 
 
 From this tower of contemplation he looked 
 down with mingled emotions of joy and sorrow on 
 the toiling world below. The wide prospect 
 seemed to enlarge his sympathies and his char- 
 ities ; and he often thought of the words of Plato : 
 u When we consider human life, we should view 
 as from a high tower all things terrestrial ; such 
 as herds, armies, men employed in agriculture, in 
 marriages, divorces, births, deaths ; the tumults 
 of courts of justice ; desolate lands ; various 
 barbarous nations ; feasts, wailings, markets ; a 
 
106 KAVANAGH, 
 
 medley of all things, in a system adorned by con- 
 trarieties." 
 
 On the outside of the door Kavanagh had 
 written the vigorous line of Dante, 
 
 " Think that To-day shall never dawn again ! " 
 
 that it might always serve as a salutation and 
 memento to him as he entered. On the inside, 
 the no less striking lines of a more modern 
 bard, 
 
 " Lose this day loitering, 't will be the same story 
 To-morrow, and the next more dilatory. 
 The indecision brings its own delays, 
 And days are lost, lamenting o'er lost days. 
 Are you in earnest ? Seize this very minute ! 
 What you can do or think you can, begin it ! 
 Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it ! 
 Only engage, and then the mind grows heated : 
 Begin it, and the work will be completed." 
 
 Once, as he sat in this retreat near noon, enjoy- 
 ing the silence, and the fresh air that visited him 
 through the oval windows, his attention was arrest- 
 ed by a cloud of dust, rolling along the road, out 
 of which soon emerged a white horse, and then 
 a very singular, round-shouldered, old-fashioned 
 chaise, containing an elderly couple, both in 
 
A TALE. 107 
 
 black. What particularly struck him was the 
 gait of the horse, who had a very disdainful 
 fling to his hind legs. The slow equipage passed, 
 and would have been for ever forgotten, had not 
 Kavanagh seen it again at sunset, stationary at 
 Mr. Churchill's door, towards which he was 
 directing his steps. 
 
 As he entered, he met Mr. Churchill, just 
 taking leave of an elderly lady and gentleman in 
 black, whom he recognized as the travellers in the 
 old chaise. Mr. Churchill looked a little flushed 
 and disturbed, and bade his guests farewell with 
 a constrained air. On seeing Kavanagh, he 
 saluted him, and called him by name ; whereupon 
 the lady pursed up her mouth, and, after a quick 
 glance, turned away her face ; and the gentle- 
 man passed with a lofty look, in which curiosity, 
 reproof, and pious indignation were strangely 
 mingled. They got into the chaise, with some 
 such feelings as Noah and his wife may be sup- 
 posed to have had on entering the ark ; the 
 whip descended upon the old horse with unusual 
 vigor, accompanied by a jerk of the reins that 
 caused him to say within himself, " What is the 
 matter now ? " He then moved off at his usual 
 pace, and with that peculiar motion of the hind 
 
108 KAVANAGH, 
 
 legs which Kavanagh had perceived in the 
 morning. 
 
 Kavanagh found his friend not a little disturbed, 
 and evidently by the conversation of the departed 
 guests. 
 
 44 That old gentleman," said Mr. Churchill, 
 "is your predecessor, Mr. Pendexter. He 
 thinks we are in a bad way since he left us. He 
 considers your liberality as nothing better than 
 rank Arianism and infidelity. The fact is, the 
 old gentleman is a little soured ; the vinous fer- 
 mentation in his veins is now over, and the 
 acetous has commenced." 
 
 Kavanagh smiled, but made no answer. 
 
 44 1, of course, defended you stoutly," con- 
 tinued Mr. Churchill ; " but if he goes about the 
 village sowing such seed, there will be tares 
 growing with the wheat." 
 
 44 1 have no fears," said Kavanagh, very 
 quietly. 
 
 Mr. Churchill's apprehensions were not, how- 
 ever, groundless ; for in the course of the week it 
 came out that doubts, surmises, and suspicions of 
 Kavanagh's orthodoxy were springing up in many 
 weak but worthy minds. And it was ever after 
 observed, that, whenever that fatal, apocalyptic 
 
A TALE. 109 
 
 white horse and antediluvian chaise appeared 
 in town, many parishioners were harassed with 
 doubts and perplexed with theological difficulties 
 and uncertainties. 
 
 Nevertheless, the main current of opinion was 
 with him ; and the parish showed their grateful 
 acknowledgment of his zeal and sympathy, by 
 requesting him to sit for his portrait to a great 
 artist from the city, who was passing the Summer 
 months in the village for recreation, using his 
 pencil only on rarest occasions and as a particular 
 favor. To this martyrdom the meek Kavanagh 
 submitted without a murmur. During the prog- 
 ress of this work of art, he was seldom left 
 alone ; some one of his parishioners was there to 
 enliven him ; and most frequently it was Miss 
 Martha Amelia Hawkins, who had become very 
 devout of late, being zealous in the Sunday 
 School, and requesting her relative not to walk 
 between churches any more. She took a very 
 lively interest in the portrait, and favored with 
 many suggestions the distinguished artist, who 
 found it difficult to obtain an expression which 
 would satisfy the parish, some wishing to have it 
 grave, if not severe, and others with " Mr. Kava- 
 nagh's peculiar smile." Kavanagh himself was 
 
110 KAVANAGH, 
 
 quite indifferent about the matter, and met his 
 fate with Christian fortitude, in a white cravat and 
 sacerdotal robes, with one hand hanging down 
 from the back of his chair, and the other holding 
 a large book with the fore-finger between its 
 leaves, reminding Mr. Churchill of Milo with his 
 fingers in the oak. The expression of the face 
 was exceedingly bland and resigned ; perhaps a 
 little wanting in strength, but on the whole satis- 
 factory to the parish. So was the artist's price ; 
 nay, it was even held by some persons to be 
 cheap, considering the quantity of back-ground he 
 had put in. 
 
A TALE. Ill 
 
 XX. 
 
 MEANWHILE, things had gone on very quietly 
 and monotonously in Mr. Churchill's family. 
 Only one event, and that a mysterious one, had 
 disturbed its serenity. It was the sudden disap- 
 pearance of Lucy, the pretty orphan girl ; and as 
 the booted centipede, who had so much excited 
 Mr. Churchill's curiosity, disappeared at the same 
 time, there was little doubt that they had gone 
 away together. But whither gone, and where- 
 fore, remained a mystery. 
 
 Mr. Churchill, also, had had his profile, and 
 those of his wife and children, taken, in a very 
 humble style, by Mr. Bantam, whose advertise- 
 ment he had noticed on his way to school nearly 
 a year before. His own was considered the best, 
 as a work of art. The face was cut out entire- 
 ly ; the collar of the coat velvet ; the shirt-collar 
 
112 KAVANAGH, 
 
 very high and white ; and the top of his head 
 ornamented with a crest of hair turning up in 
 front, though his own turned down, which 
 slight deviation from nature was explained and 
 justified by the painter as a license allowable 
 in art. 
 
 One evening, as he was sitting down to 
 begin for at least the hundredth time the great 
 Romance, subject of so many resolves and so 
 much remorse, so often determined upon but 
 never begun, a loud knock at the street-door, 
 which stood wide open, announced a visitor. 
 Unluckily, the study-door was likewise open ; 
 and consequently, being in full view, he found 
 it impossible to refuse himself; nor, in fact, 
 would he have done so, had all the doors 
 been shut and bolted, the art of refusing 
 one's self being at that time but imperfectly 
 understood in Fairmeadow. Accordingly, the 
 visitor was shown in. 
 
 He announced himself as Mr. Hathaway. 
 Passing through the village, he could not deny 
 himself the pleasure of calling on Mr. Churchill, 
 whom he knew by his writings in the periodicals, 
 though not personally. He wished, moreover, to 
 secure the cooperation of one already so favora- 
 
A TALE. 113 
 
 bly blown to the literary world, in a new Maga- 
 zine he was about to establish, in order to raise 
 the character of American literature, which, in 
 his opinion, the existing reviews and magazines 
 had entirely failed to accomplish. A daily in- 
 creasing want of something better was felt by the 
 public ; and the time had come for the establish- 
 ment of such a periodical as he proposed. After 
 explaining in rather a florid and exuberant manner 
 his plan and prospects, he entered more at large 
 into the subject of American literature, which it 
 was his design to foster and patronize. 
 
 "I think, Mr. Churchill," said he, " that we 
 want a national literature commensurate with 
 our mountains and rivers, commensurate with 
 Niagara, and the Alleghanies, and the Great 
 Lakes ! " 
 
 " Oh ! 
 
 " We want a national epic that shall corre- 
 spond to the size of the country ; that shall be 
 to all other epics what Banvard's Panorama of 
 the Mississippi is to all other paintings, the 
 largest in the world ! " 
 
 " Ah ! 
 
 " We want a national drama in which scope 
 enough shall be given to our gigantic ideas, and 
 8 
 
114 KAVANAGH, 
 
 to the unparalleled activity and progress of our 
 people ! " 
 
 " Of course." 
 
 u In a word, we want a national literature 
 altogether shaggy and unshorn, that shall shake 
 the earth, like a herd of buffaloes thundering 
 over the prairies ! " 
 
 " Precisely," interrupted Mr. Churchill ; " but 
 excuse me ! are you not confounding things 
 that have no analogy ? Great has a very differ- 
 ent meaning when applied to a river, and when 
 applied to a literature. Large and shallow may 
 perhaps be applied to both. Literature is rather 
 an image of the spiritual world, than of the physi- 
 cal, is it not ? of the internal, rather than the 
 external. Mountains, lakes, and rivers are, after 
 all, only its scenery and decorations, not its sub- 
 stance and essence. A man will not necessarily 
 be a great poet because he lives near a great 
 mountain. Nor, being a poet, will he necessarily 
 write better poems than another, because he lives 
 nearer Niagara." 
 
 " But, Mr. Churchill, you do not certainly 
 mean to deny the influence of scenery on the 
 mind ? " 
 
 " No, only to deny that it can create genius. 
 
A TALE. 115 
 
 At best, it can only develop it. Switzerland has 
 produced no extraordinary poet ; nor, as far as 
 I know, have the Andes, or the Himalaya moun- 
 tains, or the Mountains of the Moon in Africa." 
 
 " But, at all events," urged Mr. Hathaway, 
 " let us have our literature national. If it is not 
 national, it is nothing." 
 
 " On the contrary, it may be a great deal. 
 Nationality is a good thing to a certain extent, but 
 universality is better. All that is best in the great 
 poets of all countries is not what is national in 
 them, but what is universal. Their roots are in 
 their native soil ; but their branches wave in the 
 unpatriotic air, that speaks the same language unto 
 all men, and their leaves shine with the illimitable 
 light that pervades all lands. Let us throw all 
 the windows open ; let us admit the light and air 
 on all sides ; that we may look towards the four 
 corners of the heavens, and not always in the 
 same direction." 
 
 " But you admit nationality to be a good 
 thing ? " 
 
 u Yes, if not carried too far ; still, I confess, it 
 rather limits one's views of truth. I prefer what 
 is natural. Mere nationality is often ridiculous. 
 Every one smiles when he hears the Icelandic 
 
116 KAVANAGH, 
 
 proverb, c Iceland is the best land the sun shines 
 upon.' Let us be natural, and we shall be nation- 
 al enough. Besides, our literature can be strictly 
 national only so far as our character and modes 
 of thought differ from those of other nations. 
 Now, as we are very like the English, are, in 
 fact, English under a different sky, I do not see 
 how our literature can be very different from 
 theirs. Westward from hand to hand we pass 
 the lighted torch, but it was lighted at the old 
 domestic fireside of England." 
 
 " Then you think our literature is never to be 
 any thing but an imitation of the English ? " 
 
 " Not at all. It is not an imitation, but, as 
 some one has said, a continuation." 
 
 u It seems to me that you take a very narrow 
 view of the subject." 
 
 " On the contrary, a very broad one. No 
 literature is complete until the language in which 
 it is written is dead. We rnay well be proud of 
 our task and of our position. Let us see if we 
 can build in any way worthy of our forefathers." 
 
 " But I insist upon originality." 
 
 "Yes; but without spasms and convulsions. 
 Authors must not, like Chinese soldiers, expect 
 to win victories by turning somersets in the air." 
 
A TALE. 117 
 
 u Well, really, the prospect from your point 
 of view is not very brilliant. Pray, what do you 
 think of our national literature ? " 
 
 u Simply, that a national literature is not the 
 growth of a day. Centuries must contribute their 
 dew and sunshine to it. Our own is growing 
 slowly but surely, striking its roots downward, 
 and its branches upward, as is natural ; and I do 
 not wish, for the sake of what some people call 
 originality, to invert it, and try to make it grow 
 with its roots in the air. And as for having it so 
 savage and wild as you want it, I have only to 
 say, that all literature, as well as all art, is the 
 result of culture and intellectual refinement." 
 
 u Ah ! we do not want art and refinement ; we 
 want genius, untutored, wild, original, free." 
 
 " But, if this genius is to find any expression, 
 it must employ art ; for art is the external ex- 
 pression of our thoughts. Many have genius, but, 
 wanting art, are for ever dumb. The two must 
 go together to form the great poet, painter, or 
 sculptor." , 
 
 4t In that sense, very well." 
 
 " I was about to say also that I thought our 
 literature would finally not be wanting in a kind 
 of universality. 
 
118 KAVANAGH, 
 
 u As the blood of all nations is mingling with 
 our own, so will their thoughts and feelings 
 finally mingle in our literature. We shall draw 
 from the Germans tenderness ; from the Span- 
 iards, passion ; from the French, vivacity, to 
 mingle more and more with our English solid 
 sense. And this will give us universality, so 
 much to be desired." 
 
 " If that is your way of thinking," interrupted 
 the visitor, "you will like the work I am now 
 engaged upon." 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 " A great national drama, the scene of which 
 is laid in New Mexico. It is entitled Don 
 Serafin, or the Marquis of the Seven Churches. 
 The principal characters are Don Serafin, an 
 old Spanish hidalgo ; his daughter Deseada ; and 
 Fra Serapion, the Curate. The play opens 
 with Fra Serapion at breakfast ; on the table a 
 game-cock, tied by the leg, sharing his master's 
 meal. Then follows a scene at the cock-pit, 
 where the Marquis stakes the remnant of his 
 fortune his herds and hacienda on a favorite 
 cock, and loses." 
 
 " But what do you know about cock-fighting ? " 
 
A TALE. 119 
 
 demanded, rather than asked, the astonished and 
 half-laughing school-master. 
 
 " I am not very well informed on that subject, 
 and I was going to ask you if you could not 
 recommend some work." 
 
 " The only work I am acquainted with," re- 
 plied Mr. Churchill, " is the Reverend Mr. 
 Pegge's Essay on Cock-fighting among the An- 
 cients ; and I hardly see how you could apply 
 that to the Mexicans." 
 
 " Why, they are a kind of ancients, you 
 know. I certainly will hunt up the essay you 
 mention, and see what I can do with it." 
 
 " And all I know about the matter itself," 
 continued Mr. Churchill, " is, that Mark An- 
 tony was a patron of the pit, and that his cocks 
 were always beaten by Caesar's ; and that, when 
 Themistocles the Athenian general was march- 
 ing against the Persians, he halted his army to 
 see a cock-fight, and made a speech to his sol- 
 diery, to the effect, that those animals fought not 
 for the gods of their country, nor for the mon- 
 uments of their ancestors, nor for glory, nor for 
 freedom, nor for their children, but only for 
 the sake of victory. On his return to Athens, 
 
120 KAVANAGH, 
 
 he established cock-fights in that capital. But 
 how this is to help you in Mexico I do not 
 see, unless you introduce Santa Anna, and 
 compare him to Caesar and Themistocles." 
 
 u That is it ; I will do so. It will give 
 historic interest to the play. I thank you for 
 the suggestion." 
 
 " The subject is certainly very original ; but 
 it does not strike me as particularly national." 
 
 " Prospective, you see ! " said Mr. Hatha- 
 way, with a penetrating look. 
 
 u Ah, yes ; I perceive you fish with a heavy 
 sinker, down, far down in the future, among 
 posterity, as it were." 
 
 " You have seized the idea. Besides, I obvi- 
 ate your objection, by introducing an American 
 circus company from the United States, which 
 enables me to bring horses on the stage and 
 produce great scenic effect." 
 
 " That is a bold design. The critics will 
 be out upon you without fail." 
 
 " Never fear that. I know the critics root 
 and branch, out and out, have summered 
 them and wintered them, in fact, am one of 
 them myself. Very good fellows are the critics ; 
 are they not ? " 
 
A TALE. 
 
 " O, yes ; only they have suclT 
 way of talking down upon authors." 
 
 " If they did not talk down upon them, they 
 would show no superiority ; and, of course, that 
 would never do." 
 
 " Nor is it to be wondered at, that authors 
 are sometimes a little irritable. I often recall 
 the poet in the Spanish fable, whose manu- 
 scripts were devoured by mice, till at length 
 he put some corrosive sublimate into his ink, 
 and was never troubled again." 
 
 " Why don't you try it yourself?" said Mr. 
 Hathaway, rather sharply. 
 
 u O," answered Mr. Churchill, with a smile 
 of humility, u I and my writings are too in- 
 significant. They may gnaw and welcome. I 
 do not like to have poison about, even for such 
 purposes." 
 
 " By the way, Mr. Churchill," said the visitor, 
 adroitly changing the subject, " do you know 
 Honeywell ? " 
 
 "No, I do not. Who is he?" 
 
 " Honeywell the poet, I mean." 
 
 " No, I never even heard of him. There 
 are so many poets now-a-days ! " 
 
 " That is very strange indeed ! Why, I con- 
 
122 KAVANAGH, 
 
 sider Honeywell one of the finest writers in 
 the country, quite in the front rank of Ameri- 
 can authors. He is a real poet, and no mistake. 
 Nature made him with her shirt-sleeves rolled 
 up." 
 
 " What has he published ? " 
 
 u He has not published any thing yet, except 
 in the newspapers. But, this Autumn, he is 
 going to bring out a volume of poems. I could 
 not help having my joke with him about it. T 
 told him he had better print it on cartridge- 
 paper." 
 
 " Why so ? " 
 
 u Why, to make it go off better; don't you 
 understand ?" 
 
 " O, yes ; now that you explain it. Very 
 good." 
 
 " Honeywell is going to write for the Maga- 
 zine ; he is to furnish a poem for every number ; 
 and as he succeeds equally well in the plaintive 
 and didactic style of Wordsworth, and the more 
 vehement and impassioned style of Byron, I 
 think we shall do very well." 
 
 " And what do you mean to call the new 
 Magazine ? " inquired Mr. Churchill. 
 
 " We think of calling it The Niagara." 
 
A TALE. 123 
 
 " Why, that is the name of our fire-engine ! 
 Why not call it The Extinguisher?" 
 
 " That is also a good name ; but I prefer 
 The Niagara, as more national. And I hope, 
 Mr. Churchill, you will let us count upon you. 
 We should like to have an article from your 
 pen for every number." 
 
 u Do you mean to pay your contributors ? " 
 
 " Not the first year, I am sorry to say. But 
 after that, if the work succeeds, we shall pay 
 handsomely. And, of course, it will succeed, 
 for we mean it shall ; and we never say fail. 
 There is no such word in our dictionary. Be- 
 fore the year is out, we mean to print fifty 
 thousand copies ; and fifty thousand copies will 
 give us, at least, one hundred and fifty thousand 
 readers ; and, with such an audience, any author 
 might be satisfied." 
 
 He had touched at length the right strings in 
 Mr. ChurchilPs bosom ; and they vibrated to 
 the touch with pleasant harmonies. Literary 
 vanity ! literary ambition ! The editor per- 
 ceived it ; and so cunningly did he play upon 
 these chords, that, before he departed, Mr. 
 Churchill had promised to write for him a series 
 of papers on Obscure Martyrs, a kind of 
 
124 KAVANAGH, 
 
 tragic history of the unrecorded and life-long 
 sufferings of women, which hitherto had found 
 no historian, save now and then a novelist. 
 
 Notwithstanding the certainty of success, 
 notwithstanding the fifty thousand subscribers and 
 the one hundred and fifty thousand readers, 
 the Magazine never went into operation. Still 
 the dream was enough to occupy Mr. Churchill's 
 thoughts, and to withdraw them entirely from his 
 Romance for many weeks together. 
 
A TALE. 125 
 
 XXI. 
 
 EVERY state, and almost every county, of 
 New England, has its Roaring Brook, a moun- 
 tain streamlet, overhung by woods, impeded by 
 a mill, encumbered by fallen trees, but ever 
 racing, rushing, roaring dow r n through gurgling 
 gullies, and filling the forest with its delicious 
 sound and freshness ; the drinking-place of home- 
 returning herds ; the mysterious haunt of squir- 
 rels and blue-jays ; the sylvan retreat of school- 
 girls, who frequent it on Summer holidays, and 
 mingle their restless thoughts, their overflowing 
 fancies, their fair imaginings, with its restless, 
 exuberant, and rejoicing stream. 
 
 Fairmeadow had no Roaring Brook. As its 
 name indicates, it was too level a land for that. 
 But the neighbouring town of Westwood, lying 
 more inland, and among the hills, had one of the 
 
126 KAVANAGH, 
 
 fairest and fullest of all the brooks that roar. 
 It was the boast of the neighbourhood. Not 
 to have seen it, was to have seen no brook, 
 no waterfall, no mountain ravine. And, conse- 
 quently, to behold it and admire, was Kavanagh 
 taken by Mr. Churchill as soon as the Summer 
 vacation gave leisure and opportunity. The 
 party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Churchill, and 
 Alfred, in a one-horse chaise ; and Cecilia, 
 Alice, and Kavanagh, in a carryall, the fourth 
 seat in which was occupied by a large basket, 
 containing what the Squire of the Grove, in Don 
 Quixote, called his "fiambreras," that mag- 
 niloquent Castilian word for cold collation. Over 
 warm uplands, smelling of clover and mint ; 
 through cool glades, still wet with the rain of 
 yesterday ; along the river ; across the rattling 
 and tilting planks of wooden bridges ; by or- 
 chards ; by the gates of fields, w T ith the tall 
 mullen growing at the bars ; by stone walls over- 
 run with privet and barberries ; in sun and heat, 
 in shadow and coolness, forward drove the 
 happy party on that pleasant Summer morning. 
 At length they reached the Roaring Brook. 
 From a gorge in the mountains, through a long, 
 winding gallery of birch, and beech, and pine, 
 
A TALE. 127 
 
 leaped the bright, brown waters of the jubilant 
 streamlet ; out of the woods, across the plain, 
 under the rude bridge of logs, into the woods 
 again, a day between two nights. With it 
 went a song that made the heart sing likewise ; 
 a song of joy, and exultation, and freedom ; a 
 continuous and unbroken song of life, and pleas- 
 ure, and perpetual youth. Like the old Ice- 
 landic Scald, the streamlet seemed to say, 
 
 "I am possessed of songs such as neither 
 the spouse of a king, nor any son of man, can 
 repeat : one of them is called the Helper ; it 
 will help thee at thy need, in sickness, grief, and 
 all adversity." 
 
 The little party left their carriages at a farm- 
 house by the bridge, and followed the rough road 
 on foot along the brook ; now close upon it, 
 now shut out by intervening trees. Mr. Church- 
 ill, bearing the basket on his arm, walked in front 
 with his wife and Alfred. Kavanagh came be- 
 hind with Cecilia and Alice. The music of the 
 brook silenced all conversation ; only occasional 
 exclamations of delight were uttered, the irre- 
 pressible applause of fresh and sensitive natures, 
 in a scene so lovely. Presently, turning off 
 from the road, which led directly to the mill, 
 
128 KAVANAGH, 
 
 and was rough with the tracks of heavy wheels, 
 they went down to the margin of the brook. 
 
 " How indescribably beautiful this brown water 
 is ! " exclaimed Kavanagh. " It is like wine, or 
 the nectar of the gods of Olympus ; as if the 
 falling Hebe had poured it from the goblet." 
 
 " More like the mead or metheglin of the 
 northern gods," said Mr. Churchill, " spilled 
 from the drinking-horns of Valhalla." 
 
 But all the ladies thought Kavanagh's compari- 
 son the better of the two, and in fact the best that 
 could be made ; and Mr. Churchill was obliged to 
 retract and apologize for his allusion to the celes- 
 tial ale-house of Odin. 
 
 Ere long they were forced to cross the brook, 
 stepping from stone to stone, over the little rapids 
 and cascades. All crossed lightly, easily, safely ; 
 even " the sumpter mule," as Mr. Churchill 
 called himself, on account of the pannier. Only 
 Cecilia lingered behind, as if afraid to cross. 
 Cecilia, who had crossed at that same place a 
 hundred times before, Cecilia, who had the 
 surest foot, and the firmest nerves, of all the vil- 
 lage maidens, she now stood irresolute, seized 
 with a sudden tremor ; blushing, and laughing at 
 her own timidity, and yet unable to advance. 
 
A TALE. 129 
 
 Kavanagh saw her embarrassment, and hastened 
 back to help her. Her hand trembled in his ; 
 she thanked him with a gentle look and word. 
 His whole soul was softened within him. His 
 attitude, his countenance, his voice, were alike 
 submissive and subdued. He was as one pene- 
 trated with tenderest emotions. 
 
 It is difficult to know at what moment love 
 begins ; it is less difficult to know that it has 
 begun. A thousand heralds proclaim it to the 
 listening air ; a thousand ministers and messen- 
 gers betray it to the eye. Tone, act, attitude 
 and look, the signals upon the countenance, 
 the electric telegraph of touch ; all these betray 
 the yielding citadel before the word itself is 
 uttered, which, like the key surrendered, opens 
 every avenue and gate of entrance, and makes 
 retreat impossible ! 
 
 The day passed delightfully with all. They 
 sat upon the stones and the roots of trees. Ce- 
 cilia read, from a volume she had brought with 
 her, poems that rhymed with the running water. 
 The others listened and commented. Little 
 Alfred waded in the stream, with his bare white 
 feet, and launched boats over the falls. Noon 
 had been fixed upon for dining ; but they antici- 
 9 
 
130 KAVANAGH, 
 
 pated it by at least an hour. The great basket 
 was opened ; endless sandwiches were drawn 
 forth, and a cold pastry, as large as that of the 
 Squire of the Grove. During the repast, Mr. 
 Churchill slipped into the brook, while in the act 
 of handing a sandwich to his wife, which caused 
 unbounded mirth ; and Kavanagh sat down on a 
 mossy trunk, that gave way beneath him, and 
 crumbled into powder. This, also, was received 
 with great merriment. 
 
 After dinner, they ascended the brook still 
 farther, indeed, quite to the mill, which was not 
 going. It had been stopped in the midst of its 
 work. The saw still held its hungry teeth fixed 
 in the heart of a pine. Mr. Churchill took occa- 
 sion to make known to the company his long 
 cherished purpose of writing a poem called u The 
 Song of the Saw-Mill," and enlarged on the 
 beautiful associations of flood and forest connect- 
 ed with the theme. He delighted himself and 
 his audience with the fine fancies he meant to 
 weave into his poem, and wondered nobody had 
 thought of the subject before. Kavanagh said it 
 had been thought of before ; and cited Kerner's 
 little poem, so charmingly translated by Bryant. 
 Mr. Churchill had not seen it. Kavanagh looked 
 
A TALE. 131 
 
 into his pocket-book for it, but it was not to be 
 found ; still he was sure that there was such 
 a poem. Mr. Churchill abandoned his design. 
 He had spoken, and the treasure, just as he 
 touched it with his hand, was gone forever. 
 
 The party returned home as it came, all tired 
 and happy, excepting little Alfred, who was 
 tired and cross, and sat sleepy and sagging on his 
 father's knee, with his hat cocked rather fiercely 
 over his eyes. 
 
132 KAVANAGH, 
 
 XXII. 
 
 THE brown Autumn came. Out of doors, it 
 brought to the fields the prodigality of the yellow 
 harvest, to the forest, revelations of light, 
 and to the sky, the sharp air, the morning mist, 
 the red clouds at evening. Within doors, the 
 sense of seclusion, the stillness of closed and 
 curtained windows, musings by the fireside, books, 
 friends, conversation, and the long, meditative 
 evenings. To the farmer, it brought surcease of 
 toil, to the scholar, that sweet delirium of the 
 brain which changes toil to pleasure. It brought 
 the wild duck back to the reedy marshes of the 
 south ; it brought the wild song back to the 
 fervid brain of the poet. Without, the village 
 street was paved with gold ; the river ran red 
 with the reflection of the leaves. Within, the 
 faces of friends brightened the gloomy walls ; the 
 
A TALE. 133 
 
 returning footsteps of the long-absent gladdened 
 the threshold ; and all the sweet amenities of 
 social life again resumed their interrupted reign. 
 
 Kavanagh preached a sermon on the coming 
 of Autumn. He chose his text from Isaiah, 
 "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with 
 dyed garments from Bozrah ? this that is glori- 
 ous in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of 
 his strength ? Wherefore art thou red in thine 
 apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth 
 in the wine-vat ? " 
 
 To Mr. Churchill, this beloved season this 
 Joseph with his coat of many colors, as he was 
 fond of calling it brought an unexpected guest, 
 the forlorn, forsaken Lucy. The surmises of the 
 family were too true. She had wandered away 
 with the Briareus of boots. She returned alone, 
 in destitution and despair ; and often, in the grief 
 of a broken heart and a bewildered brain, was 
 heard to say, 
 
 " O, how I wish I were a Christian ! If I 
 were only a Christian, I would not live any 
 longer ; I would kill myself ! I am too wretch- 
 ed ! 
 
 A few days afterwards, a gloomy -looking man 
 rode through the town on horseback, stopping at 
 
134 KAVANAGH, 
 
 every corner, and crying into every street, with a 
 loud and solemn voice, 
 
 " Prepare ! prepare ! prepare to meet the 
 living God ! " 
 
 It was one of that fanatical sect, who believed 
 the end of the world was imminent, and had pre- 
 pared their ascension robes to be lifted up in 
 clouds of glory, while the worn-out, weary world 
 was to burn with fire beneath them, and a new 
 and fairer earth to be prepared for their inherit- 
 ance. The appearance of this forerunner of the 
 end of the world was followed by numerous 
 camp-meetings, held in the woods near the vil- 
 lage, to whose white tents and leafy chapels many 
 went for consolation and found despair. 
 
A TALE. 135 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 AGAIN the two crumbly old women sat and 
 talked together in the little parlour of the gloomy 
 house under the poplars, and the two girls sat 
 above, holding each other by the hand, thoughtful, 
 and speaking only at intervals. 
 
 Alice was unusually sad and silent. The 
 mists were already gathering over her vision, 
 those mists that were to deepen and darken as the 
 season advanced, until the external world should 
 be shrouded and finally shut from her view. Al- 
 ready the landscape began to wear a pale and 
 sickly hue, as if the sun were withdrawing 
 farther and farther, and were soon wholly to 
 disappear, as in a northern winter. But to 
 brighten this northern winter there now arose 
 within her a soft, auroral light. Yes, the auroral 
 light of love, blushing through the whole heaven 
 
136 KAVANAGH, 
 
 of her thoughts. She had not breathed that 
 word to herself, nor did she recognize any thrill 
 of passion in the new emotion she experienced. 
 But love it was ; and it lifted her soul into a 
 region, which she at once felt was native to it, 
 into a subtler ether, which seemed its natural 
 element. 
 
 This feeling, however, was not all exhilaration. 
 It brought with it its own peculiar languor and 
 sadness, its fluctuations and swift vicissitudes of 
 excitement and depression. To this the trivial 
 circumstances of life contributed. Kavanagh had 
 met her in the street, and had passed her with- 
 out recognition ; and, in the bitterness of the 
 moment, she forgot that she wore a thick veil, 
 which entirely concealed her face. At an eve- 
 ning party at Mr. Churchill's, by a kind of fatality, 
 Kavanagh had stood very near her for a long 
 time, but with his back turned, conversing with 
 Miss Hawkins, from whose toils he was, in fact, 
 though vainly, struggling to extricate himself; 
 and, in the irritation of supposed neglect, Alice 
 had said to herself, 
 
 " This is the kind of woman which most 
 fascinates men ! " 
 
 But these cruel moments of pain were few 
 
A TALE. 137 
 
 and short, while those of delight were many and 
 lasting. In a life so lonely, and with so little 
 to enliven and embellish it as hers, the guest in 
 disguise was welcomed with ardor, and enter- 
 tained without fear or suspicion. Had he been 
 feared or suspected, he would have been no 
 longer dangerous. He came as friendship, wiiere 
 friendship was most needed ; he came as de- 
 votion, where her holy ministrations were always 
 welcome. 
 
 Somewhat differently had the same passion 
 come to the heart of Cecilia ; for as the heart is, 
 so is love to the heart. It partakes of its strength 
 or weakness, its health or disease. In Cecilia, 
 it but heightened the keen sensation of life. 
 To all eyes, she became more beautiful, more 
 radiant, more lovely, though they knew not why. 
 When she and Kavanagh first met, it was hardly 
 as strangers meet, but rather as friends long 
 separated. When they first spoke to each other, 
 it seemed but as the renewal of some previous 
 interrupted conversation. Their souls flowed 
 together at once, without turbulence or agitation, 
 like waters on the same level. As they found 
 each other without seeking, so their intercourse 
 was without affectation and without embarrass- 
 ment. 
 
133 KAVANAGH, 
 
 Thus, while Alice, unconsciously to herself, 
 desired the love of Kavanagh, Cecilia, as un- 
 consciously, assumed it as already her own. 
 Alice keenly felt her own unworthiness ; Cecilia 
 made no comparison of merit. When Kava- 
 nagh was present, Alice was happy, but em- 
 barrassed ; Cecilia, joyous and natural. The 
 former feared she might displease ; the latter 
 divined from the first that she already pleased. 
 In both, this was the intuition of the heart. 
 
 So sat the friends together, as they had done 
 so many times before. But now, for the first 
 time, each cherished a secret, which she did not 
 confide to the other. Daily, for many weeks, the 
 feathered courier had come and gone from win- 
 dow to window, but this secret had never been 
 intrusted to his keeping. Almost daily the 
 friends had met and talked together, but this 
 secret had not been told. That could not be 
 confided to another, which had not been confided 
 to themselves ; that could not be fashioned into 
 words, which was not yet fashioned into thoughts, 
 but was still floating, vague and formless, through 
 the mind. Nay, had it been stated in words, 
 each, perhaps, would have denied it. The 
 distinct apparition of this fair spirit, in a visible 
 
A TALE. 139 
 
 form, would have startled them ; though, while 
 it haunted all the chambers of their souls as an 
 invisible presence, it gave them only solace and 
 delight. 
 
 tc How very feverish your hand is, dearest ! " 
 said Cecilia. " What is the matter ? Are you 
 unwell ? " 
 
 u Those are the very words my mother said 
 to me this morning," replied Alice. u I feel 
 rather languid and tired, that is all. I could not 
 sleep last night ; I never can, when it rains." 
 
 " Did it rain last night ? I did not hear it." 
 
 u Yes ; about midnight, quite hard. I listened 
 to it for hours. I love to lie awake, and hear the 
 drops fall on the roof, and on the leaves. It 
 throws me into a delicious, dreamy state, which 
 I like much better than sleep." 
 
 Cecilia looked tenderly at her pale face. Her 
 eyes were very bright, and on each cheek was 
 a crimson signal, the sight of which would have 
 given her mother so much anguish, that, perhaps, 
 it was better for her to be blind than to see. 
 
 " When you enter the land of dreams, Alice, 
 you come into my peculiar realm. I am the 
 queen of that country, you know. But, of late, 
 I have thought of resigning my throne. These 
 
140 KAVANAGH, 
 
 endless reveries are really a great waste of time 
 and strength." 
 
 " Do you think so ? " 
 
 u Yes; and Mr. Kavanagh thinks so, too. 
 We talked about it the other evening ; and after- 
 wards, upon reflection, I thought he was right." 
 
 And the friends resolved, half in jest and half 
 in earnest, that, from that day forth, the gate of 
 their day-dreams should be closed. And closed 
 it was, ere long ; for one, by the Angel of 
 Life ; for the other, by the Angel of Death ! 
 
A TALE. 141 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 THE project of the new Magazine being 
 heard of no more, and Mr. Churchill being 
 consequently deprived of his one hundred and 
 fifty thousand readers, he laid aside the few notes 
 he had made for his papers on the Obscure 
 Martyrs, and turned his thoughts again to the 
 great Romance. A whole leisure Saturday 
 afternoon was before him, pure gold, with- 
 out alloy. Ere beginning his task, he stepped 
 forth into his garden to inhale the sunny air, 
 and let his thoughts recede a little, in order 
 to leap farther. When he returned, glowing 
 and radiant with poetic fancies, he found, to his 
 unspeakable dismay, an unknown damsel sitting 
 in his arm-chair. She was rather gayly yet 
 elegantly dressed, and wore a veil, which she 
 raised as Mr. Churchill entered, fixing upon 
 him the full, liquid orbs of her large eyes. 
 
142 KAVANAGH, 
 
 u Mr. Churchill, I suppose ? " said she, rising, 
 and stepping forward. 
 
 " The same," replied the school-master, with 
 dignified courtesy. 
 
 " And will you permit me," she continued, 
 not without a certain serene self-possession, " to 
 introduce myself, for want of a better person to 
 do it for me ? My name is Cartwright, 
 Clarissa Cartwright." 
 
 This announcement did not produce that pow- 
 erful and instantaneous effect on Mr. Churchill 
 which the speaker seemed to anticipate, or at 
 least to hope. His eye did not brighten with 
 any quick recognition, nor did he suddenly 
 exclaim, 
 
 "What! Are you Miss Cartwright, the 
 poetess, whose delightful effusions I have seen 
 in all the magazines ? " 
 
 On the contrary, he looked rather blank and 
 expectant, and only said, 
 
 " I am very glad to see you ; pray sit down." 
 
 So that the young lady herself was obliged 
 to communicate the literary intelligence above 
 alluded to, which she did very gracefully, and 
 then added, 
 
 " I have come to ask a great favor of you, 
 
A TALE. 143 
 
 Mr. Churchill, which I hope you will not deny 
 me. By the advice of some friends, I have col- 
 lected my poems together," and here she 
 drew forth from a paper a large, thin manuscript, 
 bound in crimson velvet, " and think of pub- 
 lishing them in a volume. Now, would you not 
 do me the favor to look them over, and give 
 me your candid opinion, whether they are 
 worth publishing ? I should value your advice 
 so highly ! " 
 
 This simultaneous appeal to his vanity and 
 his gallantry from a fair young girl, standing on 
 the verge of that broad, dangerous ocean, in 
 which so many have perished, and looking wist- 
 fully over its flashing waters to the shores of 
 the green Isle of % Palms, such an appeal, from 
 such a person, it was impossible for Mr. Church- 
 ill to resist. He made, however, a faint show 
 of resistance, a feeble grasping after some 
 excuse for refusal, and then yielded. He 
 received from Clarissa's delicate, trembling hand 
 the precious volume, and from her eyes a still 
 more precious look of thanks, and then said, 
 
 u What name do you propose to give the 
 volume ? " 
 
 " Symphonies of the Soul, and other Poems," 
 
144 KAVANAGH, 
 
 said the young lady ; "and, if you like them, 
 and it would not be asking too much, I should 
 be delighted to have you write a Preface, to in- 
 troduce the work to the public. The publisher 
 says it would increase the sale very consid- 
 erably." 
 
 " Ah, the publisher ! yes, but that is not very 
 complimentary to yourself," suggested Mr. 
 Churchill. U I can already see your Poems 
 rebelling against the intrusion of my Preface, 
 and rising like so many nuns in a convent to 
 expel the audacious foot that has dared to invade 
 their sacred precincts." 
 
 But it was all in vain, this pale effort at 
 pleasantry. Objection was useless ; and the 
 soft-hearted school-master a second time yielded 
 gracefully to his fate, and promised the Preface. 
 The young lady took her leave with a profusion 
 of thanks and blushes ; and the dainty manu- 
 script, with its delicate chirography and crimson 
 cover, remained in the hands of Mr. Churchill, 
 who gazed at it less as a Paradise of Dainty 
 Devices than as a deed or mortgage of so 
 many precious hours of his own scanty inherit- 
 ance of time. 
 
 Afterwards, when he complained a little of 
 
A TALE. 145 
 
 this to his wife, who, during the interview, had 
 peeped in at the door, and, seeing how he was 
 occupied, had immediately withdrawn, she said 
 that nobody was to blame but himself; that he 
 should learn to say " No ! " and not do just as 
 every romantic little girl from the Academy 
 wanted him to do ; adding, as a final aggravation 
 and climax of reproof, that she really believed 
 he never would, and never meant to, begin his 
 Romance ! 
 
 10 
 
146 KAVANAGH, 
 
 XXV. 
 
 NOT long afterwards, Kavanagh and Mr. 
 Churchill took a stroll together across the fields, 
 and down green lanes, walking all the bright, 
 brief afternoon. From the summit of the hill, 
 beside the old windmill, they saw the sun set ; 
 and, opposite, the full moon rise, dewy, large, 
 and red. As they descended, they felt the 
 heavy dampness of the air, like water, rising to 
 meet them, bathing with coolness first their 
 feet, then their hands, then their faces, till they 
 were submerged in that sea of dew. As they 
 skirted the woodland on their homeward way, 
 trampling the golden leaves under foot, they 
 heard voices at a distance, singing ; and then 
 saw the lights of the camp-meeting gleaming 
 through the trees, and, drawing nearer, dis- 
 tinguished a portion of the hymn : 
 
A TALE. 147 
 
 "Don't you hear the Lord a-coming 
 To the old church-yards, 
 
 With a band of music, 
 
 With a band of music, 
 
 With a band of music, 
 Sounding through the air ? " 
 
 These words, at once awful and ludicrous, 
 rose on the still twilight air from a hundred 
 voices, thrilling with emotion, and from as many 
 beating, fluttering, struggling hearts. High above 
 them all was heard one voice, clear and musical 
 as a clarion. 
 
 " I know that voice," said Mr. Churchill ; " it 
 is Elder Evans's." 
 
 "Ah!" exclaimed Kavanagh, for only the 
 impression of awe was upon him, "he never 
 acted in a deeper tragedy than this ! How 
 terrible it is ! Let us pass on." 
 
 They hurried away, Kavanagh trembling in 
 every fibre. Silently they walked, the music 
 fading into softest vibrations behind them. 
 
 " How strange is this fanaticism ! " at length 
 said Mr. Churchill, rather as a relief to his 
 own thoughts, than for the purpose of reviving 
 the conversation. " These people really be- 
 lieve that the end of the world is close at hand." 
 
148 KAVANAGH, 
 
 " And to thousands," answered Kavanagh, 
 u this is no fiction, no illusion of an over- 
 heated imagination. To-day, to-morrow, every 
 day, to thousands, the end of the world is close 
 at hand. And why should we fear it ? We 
 walk here as it were in the crypts of life ; at 
 times, from the great cathedral above us, we 
 can hear the organ and the chanting of the choir ; 
 we see the light stream through the open door, 
 when some friend goes up before us ; and shall 
 we fear to mount the narrow staircase of the 
 grave, that leads us out of this uncertain twilight 
 into the serene mansions of the life eternal ? " 
 
 They reached the wooden bridge over the 
 river, which the moonlight converted into a river 
 of light. Their footsteps sounded on the planks ; 
 they passed without perceiving a female figure 
 that stood in the shadow below on the brink of 
 the stream, watching wistfully the steady flow 
 of the current. It was Lucy ! Her bonnet 
 and shawl were lying at her feet ; and when they 
 had passed, she waded far out into the shallow 
 stream, laid herself gently down in its deeper 
 waves, and floated slowly away into the moon- 
 light, among the golden leaves that were faded 
 and fallen like herself, among the water-lilies, 
 
A TALE. 149 
 
 whose fragrant white blossoms had been broken 
 off and polluted long ago. Without a struggle, 
 without a sigh, without a sound, she floated down- 
 ward, downward, and silently sank into the silent 
 river. Far off, faint, and indistinct, was heard 
 the startling hymn, with its wild and peculiar 
 melody, 
 
 " O, there will be mourning, mourning, mourning, mourn- 
 ing, 
 
 0, there will be mourning, at the judgment-seat of 
 Christ!" 
 
 Kavanagh's heart was full of sadness. He left 
 Mr. Churchill at his door, and proceeded home- 
 ward. On passing his church, he could not 
 resist the temptation to go in. He climbed 
 to his chamber in the tower, lighted by the 
 moon. He sat for a long time gazing from 
 the window, and watching a distant and feeble 
 candle, whose rays scarcely reached him across 
 the brilliant moon-lighted air. Gentler thoughts 
 stole over him ; an invisible presence soothed 
 him ; an invisible hand was laid upon his head, 
 and the trouble and unrest of his spirit were 
 changed to peace. 
 
 " Answer me, thou mysterious future ! " ex- 
 
150 KAVANAGH, 
 
 claimed he; " tell me, shall these things be 
 according to my desires ? " 
 
 And the mysterious future, interpreted by those 
 desires, replied, 
 
 " Soon thou shalt know all. It shall be well 
 with thee ! " 
 
A TALE. 151 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 ON the following morning, Kavanagh sat as 
 usual in his study in the tower. No traces were 
 left of the heaviness and sadness of the preceding 
 night. It was a bright, warm morning ; and the 
 window, open towards the south, let in the genial 
 sunshine. The odor of decaying leaves scented 
 the air ; far off flashed the hazy river. 
 
 Kavanagh's heart, however, was not at rest. 
 At times he rose from his books, and paced up 
 and down his little study ; then took up his hat 
 as if to go out ; then laid it down again, and 
 again resumed his books. At length he arose, 
 and, leaning on the window-sill, gazed for a long 
 time on the scene before him. Some thought 
 was laboring in his bosom, some doubt or fear, 
 which alternated with hope, but thwarted any 
 fixed resolve. 
 
152 KAVANAGH, 
 
 Ah, how pleasantly that fair autumnal land- 
 scape smiled upon him ! The great golden elms 
 that marked the line of the village street, and 
 under whose shadows no beggars sat ; the air 
 of comfort and plenty, of neatness, thrift, and 
 equality, visible everywhere ; and from far-off 
 farms the sound of flails, beating the triumphal 
 k march of Ceres through the land ; these were 
 the sights and sounds that greeted him as he 
 looked. Silently the yellow leaves fell upon the 
 graves in the church-yard ; and the dew glistened 
 in the grass, which was still long and green. 
 
 Presently his attention was arrested by a dove, 
 pursued by a little kingfisher, who constantly 
 endeavoured to soar above it, in order to attack 
 it at greater advantage. The flight of the birds, 
 thus shooting through the air at arrowy speed, 
 was beautiful. When they were opposite the 
 tower, the dove suddenly wheeled, and darted 
 in at the open window, while the pursuer held 
 on his way with a long sweep, and was out of 
 sight in a moment. 
 
 At the first glance, Kavanagh recognized the 
 dove, which lay panting on the floor. It was 
 the same he had seen Cecilia buy of the little 
 man in gray. He took it in his hands. Its heart 
 
A TALE. 153 
 
 was beating violently. About its neck was a 
 silken band ; beneath its wing, a billet, upon 
 which was a single word, u Cecilia." The bird, 
 then, was on its way to Cecilia Vaughan. He 
 hailed the omen as auspicious, and, immediately 
 closing the window, seated himself at his table, 
 and wrote a few hurried words, which, being 
 carefully folded and sealed, he fastened to the 
 band, and then hastily, as if afraid his purpose 
 might be changed by delay, opened the window 
 and set the bird at liberty. It sailed once or 
 twice round the tower, apparently uncertain and 
 bewildered, or still in fear of its pursuer. Then, 
 instead of holding its way over the fields to 
 Cecilia Vaughan, it darted over the roofs of the 
 village, and alighted at the window of Alice 
 Archer. 
 
 Having written that morning to Cecilia some- 
 thing urgent and confidential, she was already 
 waiting the answer ; and, not doubting that the 
 bird had brought it, she hastily untied the silken 
 band, and, without looking at the superscription, 
 opened the first note that fell on the table. It 
 was very brief; only a few lines, and not a name 
 mentioned in it ; an impulse, an ejaculation of 
 love ; every line quivering with electric fire, 
 
154 KAVANAGH, 
 
 every word a pulsation of the writer's heart. 
 It was signed " Arthur Kavanagh." 
 
 Overwhelmed by the suddenness and violence 
 of her emotions, Alice sat for a long time motion- 
 less, holding the open letter in her hand. Then 
 she read it again, and then relapsed into her 
 dream of joy and wonder. It would be difficult 
 to say which of the two emotions was the greater, 
 her joy that her prayer for love should be 
 answered, and so answered, her wonder that 
 Kavanagh should have selected her ! In the 
 tumult of her sensations, and hardly conscious 
 of what she was doing, she folded the note and 
 replaced it in its envelope. Then, for the first 
 time, her eye fell on the superscription. It was 
 " Cecilia Vaughan." Alice fainted. 
 
 On recovering her senses, her first act was one 
 of heroism. She sealed the note, attached it 
 to the neck of the pigeon, and sent the messen- 
 ger rejoicing on his journey. Then her feel- 
 ings had way, and she wept long and bitterly. 
 Then, with a desperate calmness, she reproved 
 her own weakness and selfishness, and felt that 
 she ought to rejoice in the happiness of her 
 friend, and sacrifice her affection, even her life, 
 to her. Her heart exculpated Kavanagh from 
 
A TALE. 155 
 
 all blame. He had not deluded her ; she had 
 deluded herself. She alone was in fault ; and 
 in deep humiliation, with wounded pride and 
 wounded love, and utter self-abasement, she 
 bowed her head and prayed for consolation and 
 fortitude. 
 
 One consolation she already had. The secret 
 was her own. She had not revealed it even to 
 Cecilia. Kavanagh did not suspect it. Public 
 curiosity, public pity, she would not have to 
 undergo. 
 
 She was resigned. She made the heroic 
 sacrifice of self, leaving her sorrow to the great 
 physician, Time, the nurse of care, the healer 
 of all smarts, the soother and consoler of all 
 sorrows. And, thenceforward, she became unto 
 Kavanagh what the moon is to the sun, for ever 
 following, for ever separated, for ever sad ! 
 
 As a traveller, about to start upon his journey, 
 resolved and yet irresolute, watches the clouds, 
 and notes the struggle between the sunshine and 
 the showers, and says, " It will be fair ; I will 
 go," and again says, u Ah, no, not yet ; the 
 rain is not yet over," so at this same hour sat 
 Cecilia Vaughan, resolved and yet irresolute, 
 longing to depart upon the fair journey before 
 
156 KAVANAGH, 
 
 her, and yet lingering on the paternal threshold, 
 as if she wished both to stay and to go, seeing 
 the sky was not without its clouds, nor the road 
 without its dangers. 
 
 It was a beautiful picture, as she sat there 
 with sweet perplexity in her face, and above it 
 an immortal radiance streaming from her brow. 
 She was like Guercino's Sibyl, with the scroll 
 of fate and the uplifted pen ; and the scroll she 
 held contained but three words, three words 
 that controlled the destiny of a man, and, by 
 their soft impulsion, directed for evermore the 
 current of his thoughts. They were, 
 
 " Come to me ! " 
 
 The magic syllables brought Kavanagh to her 
 side. The full soul is silent. Only the rising 
 and falling tides rush murmuring through their 
 channels. So sat the lovers, hand in hand ; but 
 for a long time neither spake, neither had need 
 of speech ! 
 
A TALE. 157 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 IN the afternoon, Cecilia went to communicate 
 the news to Alice with her own lips, thinking it 
 too important to be intrusted to the wings of the 
 carrier-pigeon. As she entered the door, the 
 cheerful doctor was coming out ; but this was no 
 unusual apparition, and excited no alarm. Mrs. 
 Archer, too, according to custom, was sitting in 
 the little parlour with her decrepit old neighbour, 
 who seemed almost to have taken up her abode 
 under that roof, so many hours of every day did 
 she pass there. 
 
 With a light, elastic step, Cecilia bounded up 
 to Alice's room. She found her reclining in her 
 large chair, flushed and excited. Sitting down 
 by her side, and taking both her hands, she said, 
 with great emotion in the tones of her voice, 
 
 " Dearest Alice, I have brought you some 
 
158 KAVANAGH, 
 
 news that I am sure will make you well. For 
 my sake, you will be no longer ill when you hear 
 it. I am engaged to Mr. Kavanagh ! " 
 
 Alice feigned no surprise at this announcement. 
 She returned the warm pressure of Cecilia's 
 hand, and, looking affectionately in her face, said 
 very calmly, 
 
 " I knew it would be so. I knew that he 
 loved you, and that you would love him." 
 
 " How could I help it ? " said Cecilia, her 
 eyes beaming with dewy light ; " could any one 
 help loving him ? " 
 
 " No," answered Alice, throwing her arms 
 around Cecilia's neck, and laying her head upon 
 her shoulder ; " at least, no one whom he loved. 
 But when did this happen ? Tell me all about 
 it, dearest ! " 
 
 Cecilia was surprised, and perhaps a little hurt, 
 at the quiet, almost impassive manner in which 
 her friend received this great intelligence. She 
 had expected exclamations of wonder and delight, 
 and such a glow of excitement as that with 
 which she was sure she should have hailed the 
 announcement of Alice's engagement. But this 
 momentary annoyance was soon swept away by 
 the tide of her own joyous sensations, as she 
 
A TALE. 159 
 
 proceeded to recall to the recollection of her 
 friend the thousand little circumstances that had 
 marked the progress of her love and Kavanagh's ; 
 things which she must have noticed, which she 
 could not have forgotten ; with questions inter- 
 spersed at intervals, such as, " Do you recollect 
 when ?" and "I am sure you have not forgot- 
 ten, have you ? " and dreamy little pauses of 
 silence, and intercalated sighs. She related to 
 her, also, the perilous adventure of the carrier- 
 pigeon ; how it had been pursued by the cruel 
 kingfisher ; how it had taken refuge in Kava- 
 nagh's tower, and had been the bearer of his 
 letter, as well as her own. When she had 
 finished, she felt her bosom wet with the tears 
 of Alice, who was suffering martyrdom on that 
 soft breast, so full of happiness. Tears of 
 bitterness, tears of blood ! And Cecilia, in 
 the exultant temper of her soul at the moment, 
 thought them tears of joy, and pressed Alice 
 closer to her heart, and kissed and caressed her. 
 
 " Ah, how very happy you are, Cecilia ! " 
 at length sighed the poor sufferer, in that slightly 
 querulous tone, to which Cecilia was not unac- 
 customed; " how very happy you are, and how 
 very wretched am I ! You have all the joy of 
 
160 KAVANAGH, 
 
 life, I all its loneliness. How little you will 
 think of me now ! How little you will need me ! 
 I shall be nothing to you, you will forget me." 
 
 " Never, dearest!" exclaimed Cecilia, with 
 much warmth and sincerity. " I shall love you 
 only the more. We shall both love you. You 
 will now have two friends instead of one." 
 
 " Yes ; but both will not be equal to the one 
 I lose. No, Cecilia ; let us not make to our- 
 selves any illusions. I do not. You cannot now 
 be with me so much and so often as you have 
 been. Even if you were, your thoughts would 
 be elsewhere. Ah, I have lost my friend, when 
 most I needed her ! " 
 
 Cecilia protested ardently and earnestly, and 
 dilated with eagerness on her little plan of life, in 
 which their romantic friendship was to gain only 
 new strength and beauty from the more romantic 
 love. She was interrupted by a knock at the 
 street door ; on hearing which, she paused a 
 moment, and then said, 
 
 " It is Arthur. He was to call for me." 
 
 Ah, what glimpses of home, and fireside, and a 
 whole life of happiness for Cecilia, were revealed 
 by that one word of love and intimacy, "Ar- 
 thur " ! and for Alice, what a sentence of doom ! 
 
A TALE. 161 
 
 what sorrow without a name ! what an endless 
 struggle of love and friendship, of duty and in- 
 clination ! A little quiver of the eyelids and the 
 hands, a hasty motion to raise her head from 
 Cecilia's shoulder, these were the only out- 
 ward signs of emotion. But a terrible pang went 
 to her heart ; her blood rushed eddying to her 
 brain ; and when Cecilia had taken leave of her 
 with the triumphant look of love beaming upon her 
 brow, and an elevation in her whole attitude and 
 bearing, as if borne up by attendant angels, she 
 sank back into her chair, exhausted, fainting, 
 fearing, longing, hoping to die. 
 
 And below sat the two old women, talking of 
 moths, and cheap furniture, and what was the best 
 remedy for rheumatism ; and from the door went 
 forth two happy hearts, beating side by side with 
 the pulse of youth and hope and joy, and within 
 them and around them was a new heaven and a 
 new earth ! 
 
 Only those who have lived in a small town can 
 really know how great an event therein is a new 
 engagement. From tongue to tongue passes the 
 swift countersign ; from eye to eye flashes the 
 illumination of joy, or the bale-fire of alarm ; the 
 streets and houses ring with it, as with the pene- 
 11 
 
162 KAVANAGH, 
 
 trating, all-pervading sound of the village bell ; 
 the whole community feels a thrill of sympathy, 
 and seems to congratulate itself that all the 
 great events are by no means confined to the 
 great towns. As Cecilia and Kavanagh passed 
 arm in arm through the village, many curious eyes 
 watched them from the windows, many hearts 
 grown cold or careless rekindled their household 
 fires of love from the golden altar of God, borne 
 through the streets by those pure and holy hands ! 
 
 The intelligence of the engagement, however, 
 was received very differently by different persons. 
 Mrs. Wilmer dings wondered, for her part, why 
 any body wanted to get married at all. The little 
 taxidermist said he knew it would be so from the 
 very first day they had met at his aviary. Miss 
 Hawkins lost suddenly much of her piety and 
 all her patience, and laughed rather hysterically. 
 Mr. Hawkins said it was impossible, but went 
 in secret to consult a friend, an old bachelor, on 
 the best remedy for love ; and the old bachelor, 
 as one well versed in such affairs, gravely advised 
 him to think of the lady as a beautiful statue ! 
 
 Once more the indefatigable school -girl took 
 up her pen, and wrote to her foreign correspond- 
 ent a letter that might rival the famous epistle of 
 
A TALE. 163 
 
 Madame de Sevigne to her daughter, announcing 
 the engagement of Mademoiselle Montpensier. 
 Through the whole of the first page, she told her 
 to guess who the lady was ; through the whole of 
 the second, who the gentleman was ; the third 
 was devoted to what was said about it in the 
 village ; and on the fourth there were two post- 
 scripts, one at the top and the other at the bot- 
 tom, the first stating that they were to be married 
 in the Spring, and to go to Italy immediately 
 afterwards, and the last, that Alice Archer was 
 dangerously ill with a fever. 
 
 As for the Churchills, they could find no words 
 powerful enough to express their delight, but 
 gave vent to it in a banquet on Thanksgiving- day, 
 in which the wife had all the trouble and the 
 husband all the pleasure. In order that the 
 entertainment might be worthy of the occasion, 
 Mr. Churchill wrote to the city for the best 
 cookery-book ; and the bookseller, executing the 
 order in all its amplitude, sent him the Practical 
 Guide to the Culinary Art in all its Branches, by 
 Frascatelli, pupil of the celebrated Careme, and 
 Chief Cook to Her Majesty the Queen, a 
 ponderous volume, illustrated with numerous en- 
 gravings, and furnished with bills of fare for every 
 
164 KAVANAGH, 
 
 month in the year, and any number of persons. 
 This great work was duly studied, evening after 
 evening ; and Mr. Churchill confessed to his wife, 
 that, although at first startled by the size of the 
 book, he had really enjoyed it very highly, and 
 had been much pleased to be present in imagina- 
 tion at so many grand entertainments, and to sit 
 opposite the Queen without having to change his 
 dress or the general style of his conversation. 
 
 The dinner hour, as well as the dinner itself, 
 was duly debated. Mr. Churchill was in favor 
 of the usual hour of one ; but his wife thought it 
 should be an hour later. Whereupon he re 
 marked, 
 
 " King Henry the Eighth dined at ten o'clock 
 and supped at four. His queen's maids of honor 
 had a gallon of ale and a chine of beef for their 
 breakfast." 
 
 To which his wife answered, 
 
 ' c I hope we shall have something a little more 
 refined than that." 
 
 The day on which the banquet should take 
 place was next discussed, and both agreed that 
 no day could be so appropriate as Thanksgiving- 
 day ; for, as Mrs. Churchill very truly remarked, 
 it was really a day of thanksgiving to Kavanagh. 
 She then said, 
 
A TALE. 165 
 
 " How very solemnly he read the Governor's 
 Proclamation yesterday ! particularly the words 
 ' God save the Commonwealth of Massachu- 
 setts ! ' And what a Proclamation it was ! 
 When he spread it out on the pulpit, it looked 
 like a table-cloth ! " 
 
 Mr. Churchill then asked, 
 
 " What day of the week is the first of Decem- 
 ber ? Let me see, 
 
 ' At Dover dwells George Brown, Esquire, 
 Good Christopher Finch and Daniel Friar ! ' 
 
 Thursday." 
 
 " I could have told you that," said his wife, 
 " by a shorter process than your old rhyme. 
 Thanksgiving-day always comes on Thursday." 
 
 These preliminaries being duly settled, the 
 dinner was given. 
 
 There being only six guests, and the dinner 
 being modelled upon one for twenty-four persons, 
 Russian style in November, it was very abundant. 
 It began with a Colbert soup, and ended with a 
 Nesselrode pudding ; but as no allusion was made 
 in the course of the repast to the French names 
 of the dishes, and the mutton, and turnips, and 
 pancakes were all called by their English patro- 
 
166 KAVANAGH, 
 
 nymics, the dinner appeared less magnificent in 
 reality than in the bill of fare, and the guests did 
 not fully appreciate how superb a banquet they 
 were enjoying. The hilarity of the occasion 
 was not marred by any untoward accident ; 
 though once or twice Mr. Churchill was much 
 annoyed, and the company much amused, by 
 Master Alfred, who was allowed to be present 
 at the festivities, and audibly proclaimed what 
 was coming, long before it made its appearance. 
 When the dinner was over, several of the guests 
 remembered brilliant and appropriate things they 
 might have said, and wondered they were so 
 dull as not to think of them in season ; and when 
 they were all gone, Mr. Churchill remarked to his 
 wife that he had enjoyed himself very much, and 
 that he should like to ask his friends to just such 
 a dinner every week ! 
 
A TALE. 167 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 THE first snow came. How beautiful it was, 
 falling so silently, all day long, all night long, on 
 the mountains, on the meadows, on the roofs of 
 the living, on the graves of the dead ! All white 
 save the river, that marked its course by a 
 winding black line across the landscape ; and 
 the leafless trees, that against the leaden sky 
 now revealed more fully the wonderful beauty and 
 intricacy of their branches ! 
 
 What silence, too, came with the snow, and 
 what seclusion ! Every sound was muffled, every 
 noise changed to something soft and musical. 
 No more trampling hoofs, no more rattling 
 wheels ! Only the chiming sleigh-bells, beating 
 as swift and merrily as the hearts of children. 
 
 All day long, all night long, the snow fell on 
 the village and on the church-yard ; on the happy 
 
168 KAVANAGH, 
 
 home of Cecilia Vaughan, on the lonely grave 
 of Alice Archer ! Yes ; for before the winter 
 came she had gone to that land where winter 
 never comes. Her long domestic tragedy was 
 ended. She was dead ; and with her had died 
 her secret sorrow and her secret love. Kava- 
 nagh never knew what wealth of affection for him 
 faded from the world when she departed ; Cecilia 
 never knew what fidelity of friendship, what 
 delicate regard, what gentle magnanimity, what 
 angelic patience had gone with her into the grave ; 
 Mr. Churchill never knew, that, while he was ex- 
 ploring the Past for records of obscure and un- 
 known martyrs, in his own village, near his own 
 door, before his own eyes, one of that silent 
 sisterhood had passed away into oblivion, un- 
 noticed and unknown. 
 
 How often, ah, how often, between the desire 
 of the heart and its fulfilment, lies only the brief- 
 est space of time and distance, and yet the desire 
 remains forever unfulfilled ! It is so near that we 
 can touch it with the hand, and yet so far away 
 that the eye cannot perceive it. What Mr. 
 Churchill most desired was before him. The 
 Romance he was longing to find and record had 
 really occurred in his neighbourhood, among his 
 
A TALE. 169 
 
 own friends. It had been set like a picture 
 into the frame-work of his life, inclosed within 
 his own experience. But he could not see it 
 as an object apart from himself; and as he was 
 gazing at what was remote and strange and in- 
 distinct, the nearer incidents of aspiration, love, 
 and death, escaped him. They were too near to 
 be clothed by the imagination with the golden 
 vapors of romance ; for the familiar seems trivial, 
 and only the distant and unknown completely fill 
 and satisfy the mind. 
 
 The winter did not pass without its peculiar 
 delights and recreations. The singing of the 
 great wood fires ; the blowing of the wind over 
 the chimney-tops, as if they w r ere organ pipes ; 
 the splendor of the spotless snow ; the purple 
 wall built round the horizon at sunset ; the sea- 
 suggesting pines, with the moan of the billows in 
 their branches, on which the snows were furled 
 like sails ; the northern lights ; the stars of steel ; 
 the transcendent moonlight, and the lovely shad- 
 ows of the leafless trees upon the snow ; these 
 things did not pass unnoticed nor unremembered. 
 Every one of them made its record upon the 
 heart of Mr. Churchill. 
 
 His twilight walks, his long Saturday afternoon 
 
170 KAVANAGH, 
 
 rambles, had again become solitary ; for Kavanagh 
 was lost to him for such purposes, and his wife" 
 was one of those women who never walk. 
 Sometimes he went down to the banks of the 
 frozen river, and saw the farmers crossing it 
 with their heavy-laden sleds, and the Fairmeadow 
 schooner imbedded in the ice ; and thought of 
 Lapland sledges, and the song of Kulnasatz, and 
 the dismantled, ice-locked vessels of the explorers 
 in the Arctic Ocean. Sometimes he went to the 
 neighbouring lake, and saw the skaters wheeling 
 round their fire, and speeding away before the 
 wind ; and in his imagination arose images of the 
 Norwegian Skate-Runners, bearing the tidings of 
 King Charles's death from Frederickshall to 
 Drontheim, and of the retreating Swedish army, 
 frozen to death in its fireless tents among the 
 mountains. And then he would watch the cut- 
 ting of the ice with ploughs, and the horses drag- 
 ging the huge blocks to the store-houses, and 
 contrast them with the Grecian mules, bearing the 
 snows of Mount Parnassus to the markets of 
 Athens, in panniers protected from the sun by 
 boughs of oleander and rhododendron. 
 
 The rest of his leisure hours were employed in 
 any thing and every thing save in writing his 
 
A TALE. 171 
 
 Romance. A great deal of time was daily 
 consumed in reading the newspapers, because it 
 was necessary, he said, to keep up with the 
 times ; and a great deal more in writing a 
 Lyceum Lecture, on u What Lady Macbeth 
 might have been, had her energies been properly 
 directed." He also made some little progress in 
 a poetical arithmetic, founded on Bhascara's, but 
 relinquished it, because the school committee 
 thought it was not practical enough, and more 
 than hinted that he had better adhere to the old 
 system. And still the vision of the great 
 Romance moved before his mind, august and 
 glorious, a beautiful mirage of the desert. 
 
172 KAVANAGH, 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 
 
 THE wedding did not take place till Spring. 
 And then Kavanagh and his Cecilia departed on 
 their journey to Italy and the East, a sacred 
 mission, a visit like the Apostle's to the Seven 
 Churches, nay, to all the Churches of Christen- 
 dom ; hoping by some means to sow in many 
 devout hearts the desire and prophecy that 'filled 
 his own, the union of all sects into one univers- 
 al Church of Christ. They intended to be absent 
 one year only ; they were gone three. It seemed 
 to their friends that they never wonld return. 
 But at length they came, the long absent, the 
 long looked for, the long desired, bearing with 
 them that delicious perfume of travel, that genial, 
 sunny atmosphere, and soft, Ausonian air, which 
 returning travellers always bring about them. 
 
A TALE. 173 
 
 It was night when they reached the village, 
 and they could not see what changes had taken 
 place in it during their absence. How it had 
 dilated and magnified itself, how it had puffed 
 itself up, and bedizened itself with flaunting, 
 ostentatious signs, how it stood, rotund and 
 rubicund with brick, like a portly man, with his 
 back to the fire and both hands in his pockets, 
 warm, expansive, apoplectic, and entertaining a 
 very favorable opinion of himself, all this they 
 did not see, for the darkness ; but Kavanagh 
 beheld it all, and more, when he went forth on 
 the following morning. 
 
 How Cecilia's heart beat as they drove up the 
 avenue to the old house ! The piny odors in the 
 night air, the solitary light at her father's window, 
 the familiar bark of the dog Major at the sound of 
 the wheels, awakened feelings at once new and 
 old. A sweet perplexity of thought, a strange 
 familiarity, a no less pleasing strangeness ! The 
 lifting of the heavy brass latch, and the jarring of 
 the heavy brass knocker as the door closed, were 
 echoes from her childhood. Mr. Vaughan they 
 found, as usual, among his papers in the study ; 
 the same bland, white-haired man, hardly a day 
 older than when they left. At the sight of him, 
 
174 KAVANAGH, 
 
 the whole long absence in Italy became a dream, 
 and vanished away. Even Kavanagh was for the 
 moment forgotten. She was a daughter, not a 
 wife ; she had not been married, she had not 
 been in Italy ! 
 
 In the morning, Kavanagh sallied forth to find 
 the Fairmeadow of his memory, but found it not. 
 The railroad had completely transformed it. The 
 simple village had become a very precocious 
 town. New shops, with new names over the 
 doors ; new streets, with new forms and faces in 
 them ; the whole town seemed to have been taken 
 and occupied by a besieging army of strangers. 
 Nothing was permanent but the work-house, 
 standing alone in the pasture by the river ; and, 
 at the end of the street, the school-house, that 
 other work-house, where in childhood we pick 
 and untwist the cordage of the brain, that, later in 
 life, we may not be obliged to pull to pieces the 
 more material cordage of old ships. 
 
 Kavanagh soon turned in despair from the main 
 street into a little green lane, where there were 
 few houses, and where the barberry still nodded 
 over the old stone wall ; a place he had much 
 loved in the olden time for its silence and seclu- 
 sion. He seemed to have entered his ancient 
 
A TALE. 175 
 
 realm of dreams again, and was walking with his 
 hat drawn a little over his eyes. He had not 
 proceeded far, when he was startled by a woman's 
 voice, quite sharp and loud, crying from the op- 
 posite side of the lane. Looking up, he beheld a 
 small cottage, against the wall of which rested a 
 ladder, and on this ladder stood the wornan from 
 whom the voice came. Her face was nearly 
 concealed by a spacious gingham sun-bonnet, and 
 in her right hand she held extended a large brush, 
 with which she was painting the front of her 
 cottage, when interrupted by the approach of 
 Kavanagh, who, thinking she was calling to him, 
 but not understanding what she said, made haste 
 to cross over to her assistance. At this move- 
 ment her tone became louder and more peremp- 
 tory ; and he could now understand that her cry 
 was rather ,a warning than an invitation. 
 
 " Go away ! " she said, flourishing her brush. 
 " Go away ' What are you coming down here 
 for, when I am on the ladder, painting my house ? 
 If you don't go right about your business, I will 
 come down and " 
 
 "Why, Miss Manchester !" exclaimed Kava- 
 nagh ; " how could I know that you would be 
 going up the ladder just as I came down the 
 lane ? " 
 
176 KAVANAGH, 
 
 " Well, I declare ! if it is not Mr. Kava- 
 nagh ! 
 
 And she scrambled down the ladder backwards 
 with as much grace as the circumstances permit- 
 ted. She, too, like the rest of his friends in the 
 village, showed symptoms of growing older. The 
 passing years had drunk a portion of the light 
 from her eyes, and left their traces on her cheeks, 
 as birds that drink at lakes leave their foot-prints 
 on the margin. But the pleasant smile remained, 
 and reminded him of the by-gone days, when she 
 used to open for him the door of the gloomy 
 house under the poplars. 
 
 Many things had she to ask, and many to tell ; 
 and for full half an hour Kavanagh stood leaning 
 over the paling, while she remained among the 
 hollyhocks, as stately and red as the plants them- 
 selves. At parting, she gave him one of the 
 flowers for his wife ; and, when he was fairly out 
 of sight, again climbed the perilous ladder, and 
 resumed her fresco painting. 
 
 Through all the vicissitudes of these later years, 
 Sally had remained true to her principles and 
 resolution. At Mrs. Archer's death, which oc- 
 cured soon after Kavanagh's wedding, she had 
 retired to this little cottage, bought and paid for 
 
A TALE. 177 
 
 by her own savings. Though often urged by 
 Mr. Vaughan's man, Silas, who breathed his 
 soul out upon the air of Summer evenings 
 through a keyed bugle, she resolutely refused to 
 marry. In vain did he send her letters written 
 with his own blood, going barefooted into the 
 brook to be bitten by leeches, and then using 
 his feet as inkstands : she refused again and 
 again. Was it that in some blue chamber, 
 or some little warm back parlour, of her heart, 
 the portrait of the inconstant dentist was still 
 hanging ? Alas, no ! But as to some hearts it 
 is given in youth to blossom with the fragrant 
 blooms of young desire, so others are doomed 
 by a mysterious destiny to be checked in Spring 
 by chill winds, blowing over the bleak common 
 of the world. So had it been with her desires 
 and thoughts of love. Fear now predominated 
 over hope ; and to die unmarried had become 
 to her a fatality which she dared not resist. 
 
 In the course of his long conversation with Miss 
 Manchester, Kavanagh learned many things about 
 the inhabitants of the town. Mrs. Wilmer dings 
 was still carrying on her labors in the u Dun- 
 stable and eleven-braid, open-work and colored 
 straws." Her husband had taken to the tavern, 
 12 
 
178 KAVANAGH, 
 
 and often came home very late, " with a brick 
 in his hat," as Sally expressed it. Their son 
 and heir was far away in the Pacific, on board 
 a whale-ship. Miss Amelia Hawkins remained 
 unmarried, though possessing a talent for matri- 
 mony which amounted almost to genius. Her 
 brother, the poet, was no more. Finding it im- 
 possible to follow the old bachelor's advice, and 
 look upon Miss Vaughan as a beautiful statue, 
 he made one or two attempts, but in vain, to 
 throw himself away on unworthy objects, and 
 then died. At this event, two elderly maidens 
 went into mourning simultaneously, each thinking 
 herself engaged to him ; and suddenly went out 
 of it again, mutually indignant with each other, 
 and mortified with themselves. The little taxi- 
 dermist was still hopping about in his aviary, 
 looking more than ever like his gray African 
 parrot. Mrs. Archer's house was uninhabited. 
 
A TALE. 179 
 
 XXX. 
 
 KAVANAGH continued his walk in the direction 
 of Mr. Churchill's residence. This, at least, 
 was unchanged, quite unchanged. The same 
 white front ; the same brass knocker ; the same 
 old wooden gate, with its chain and ball ; the same 
 damask roses under the windows ; the same sun- 
 shine without and within. The outer door and 
 study door were both open, as usual in the warm 
 weather ; and at the table sat Mr. Churchill, 
 writing. Over each ear was a black and inky 
 stump of a pen, which, like the two ravens 
 perched on Odin's shoulders, seemed to whisper 
 to him all that passed in heaven and on earth. 
 On this occasion, their revelations were of the 
 earth. He was correcting school exercises. 
 
 The joyful welcome of Mr. Churchill, as 
 Kavanagh entered, and the cheerful sound of 
 
180 KAVANAGH, 
 
 their voices, soon brought Mrs. Churchill to the 
 study, her eyes bluer than ever, her cheeks 
 fairer, her form more round and full. The 
 children came in also, Alfred grown to boy's 
 estate and exalted into a jacket ; and the baby 
 -that was, less than two years behind him, and 
 catching all his falling mantles, and all his tricks 
 and maladies. 
 
 Kavanagh found Mr. Churchill precisely where 
 he left him. He had not advanced one step, 
 not one. The same dreams, the same longings, 
 the same aspirations, the same indecision. A 
 thousand things had been planned, and none com- 
 pleted. His imagination seemed still to exhaust 
 itself in running, before it tried to leap the ditch. 
 While he mused, the fire burned in other brains. 
 Other hands wrote the books he dreamed about. 
 He freely used his good ideas in conversation, 
 and in letters ; and they were straightway wrought 
 into the texture of other men's books, and so 
 lost to him for ever. His work on Obscure 
 Martyrs was anticipated by Mr. Hathaway, who, 
 catching the idea from him, wrote and published 
 a series of papers on Unknown Saints, before 
 Mr. Churchill had fairly arranged his materials. 
 Before he had written a chapter of his great Ro- 
 
A TALE. 181 
 
 mance, another friend and novelist had published 
 one on the same subject. 
 
 Poor Mr. Churchill ! So far as fame and ex- 
 ternal success were concerned, his life certainly 
 was a failure. He was, perhaps, too deeply 
 freighted, too much laden by the head, to ride 
 the waves gracefully. Every sea broke over 
 him, he was half the time under water ! 
 
 All his defects and mortifications he attributed 
 to the outward circumstances of his life, the exi- 
 gencies of his profession, the accidents of chance. 
 But, in reality, they lay much deeper than this. 
 They were within himself. He wanted the all- 
 controlling, all-subduing will. He wanted the 
 fixed purpose that sways and bends all circum- 
 stances to its uses, as the wind bends the reeds 
 and rushes beneath it. 
 
 In a few minutes, and in that broad style of 
 handling, in which nothing is distinctly defined, but 
 every thing clearly suggested, Kavanagh sketched 
 to his friends his three years' life in Italy and the 
 East. And then, turning to Mr. Churchill, he 
 said, 
 
 " And you, my friend, what have you been 
 doing all this while ? You have written to me 
 so rarely that I have hardly kept pace with you. 
 
182 KAVANAGH, 
 
 But I have thought of you constantly. In all the 
 old cathedrals ; in all the lovely landscapes ; 
 among the Alps and Apennines ; in looking down 
 on Duomo d'Ossola ; at the Inn of Baveno ; at 
 Gaeta ; at Naples ; in old and mouldy Rome ; 
 in older Egypt ; in the Holy Land ; in all galle- 
 ries and churches and ruins ; in our rural retire- 
 ment at Fiesoli ; whenever I have seen any 
 thing beautiful, I have thought of you, and of 
 how much you would have enjoyed it ! " 
 
 Mr. Churchill sighed ; and then, as if, with a 
 touch as masterly, he would draw a picture that 
 should define nothing, but suggest every thing, 
 he said, 
 
 " You have no children, Kavanagh ; we have 
 five." 
 
 " Ah, so many already ! " exclaimed Kava- 
 nagh. " A living Pentateuch ! A beautiful Pen- 
 tapylon, or five -gated temple of Life ! A charm- 
 ing number ! " 
 
 " Yes," answered Mr. Churchill ; " a beautiful 
 number ; Juno's own ; the wedding of the first 
 even and first uneven numbers ; the number 
 sacred to marriage, but having no reference, 
 direct or indirect, to the Pythagorean novitiate 
 of five years of silence." 
 
A TALE. 183 
 
 cc No ; it certainly is not the vocation of chil- 
 dren to be silent," said Kavanagh, laughing. 
 " That would be out of nature ; saving always 
 the children of the brain, which do not often make 
 so much noise in the world as we desire. I hope 
 a still larger family of these has grown up around 
 you during my absence." 
 
 " Quite otherwise," answered the school- 
 master, sadly. " My brain has been almost bar- 
 ren of songs. I have only been trifling ; and I am 
 afraid, that, if I play any longer with Apollo, the 
 untoward winds will blow the discus of the god 
 against my forehead, and strike me dead with it, 
 as they did Hyacinth of old." 
 
 " And your Romance, have you been more 
 successful with that ? I hope it is finished, or 
 nearly finished ? " 
 
 " Not yet begun," said Mr. Churchill. " The 
 plan and characters still remain vague and indefi- 
 nite in my mind. I have not even found a name 
 for it." 
 
 " That you can determine after the book is 
 written," suggested Kavanagh. " You can name 
 it, for instance, as the old Heimskringla was 
 named, from the initial word of the first chapter." 
 
 " Ah ! that was very well in the olden time, 
 
184 KAVANAGH, 
 
 and in Iceland, when there were no quarterly 
 reviews. It would be called affectation now." 
 
 " I see you still stand a little in awe of opinion. 
 Never fear that. The strength of criticism lies 
 only in the weakness of the thing criticized." 
 
 " That is the truth, Kavanagh ; and I am 
 more afraid of deserving criticism than of receiv- 
 ing it. I stand in awe of my own opinion. The 
 secret demerits of which we alone, perhaps, are 
 conscious, are often more difficult to bear than 
 those which have been publicly censured in us, 
 and thus in some degree atoned for." 
 
 " I will not say," replied Kavanagh, " that 
 humility is the only road to excellence, but I am 
 sure that it is one -road." 
 
 " Yes, humility ; but not humiliation," sighed 
 Mr. Churchill, despondingly. u As for excel- 
 lence, I can only desire it, and dream of it ; I 
 cannot attain to it ; it lies too far from me ; I 
 cannot reach it. These very books about me 
 here, that once stimulated me to action, have 
 now become my accusers. They are my Eu- 
 menides, and drive me to despair." 
 
 " My friend," said Kavanagh, after a short 
 pause, during which he had taken note of Mr. 
 Churchill's sadness, " that is not always excel- 
 
A TALE. 185 
 
 lent which lies far away from us. What is re- 
 mote and difficult of access we are apt to over- 
 rate ; what is really best for us lies always within 
 our reach, though often overlooked. To speak 
 frankly, I am afraid this is the case with your 
 Romance. You are evidently grasping at some- 
 thing which lies beyond the confines of your own 
 experience, and which, consequently, is only a 
 play of shadows in the realm of fancy. The 
 figures have no vitality ; they are only outward 
 sh^ws, wanting inward life. We can give to 
 others only what we have." 
 
 " And if we have nothing worth giving ? " in- 
 terrupted Mr. Churchill. 
 
 "No man is so poor as that. As well might 
 the mountain streamlets say they have nothing 
 worth giving to the sea, because they are not 
 rivers. Give what you have. To some one, it 
 may be better than you dare to think. If you 
 had looked nearer for the materials of your 
 Romance, and had set about it in earnest, it 
 would now have been finished." 
 
 " And burned, perhaps," interposed Mr. 
 Churchill; " or sunk with the books of Simon 
 Magus to the bottom of the Dead Sea." 
 
 " At all events, you would have had the pleas- 
 
186 KAVANAGH, 
 
 ure of writing it. I remember one of the old 
 traditions of Art, from which you may perhaps 
 draw a moral. When Raphael desired to paint 
 his Holy Family, for a long time he strove in 
 vain to express the idea that filled and possessed 
 his soul. One morning, as he walked beyond the 
 city gates, meditating the sacred theme, he be- 
 held, sitting beneath a vine at her cottage door, a 
 peasant woman, holding a boy in her arms, while 
 another leaned upon her knee, and gazed at the 
 approaching stranger. The painter found here, in 
 real life, what he had so long sought for in vain in 
 the realms of his imagination ; and quickly, with 
 his chalk pencil, he sketched, upon the head of a 
 wine-cask that stood near them, the lovely group, 
 which afterwards, when brought into full perfec- 
 tion, became the transcendent Madonna della 
 Seggiola." 
 
 "All this is true," replied Mr. Churchill, 
 u but it gives me no consolation. I now despair 
 of writing any thing excellent. I have no time to 
 devote to meditation and study. My life is given 
 to others, and to this destiny I submit without a 
 murmur ; for I have the satisfaction of having 
 labored faithfully in my calling, and of having 
 perhaps trained and incited others to do what I 
 
A TALE. 187 
 
 shall never do. Life is still precious to me for 
 its many uses, of which the writing of books is 
 but one. I do not complain, but accept this 
 destiny, and say, with that pleasant author, 
 Marcus Antoninus, c Whatever is agreeable to 
 thee shall be agreeable to me, O graceful Uni- 
 verse ! nothing shall be to me too early or too 
 late, which is seasonable to thee ! Whatever thy 
 seasons bear shall be joyful fruit to me, O 
 Nature ! from thee are all things ; in thee they 
 subsist ; to thee they return. Could one say, 
 Thou dearly beloved city of Cecrops ? and wilt 
 thou not say, Thou dearly beloved city of 
 God ? ' " 
 
 " Amen ! " said Kavanagh. " And, to follow 
 your quotation with another, c The gale that 
 blows from God we must endure, toiling but not 
 repining.' " 
 
 Here Mrs. Churchill, who had something of 
 Martha in her, as well as of Mary, and had left 
 the room when the conversation took a literary 
 turn, came back to announce that dinner was 
 ready, and Kavanagh, though warmly urged to 
 stay, took his leave, having first obtained from the 
 Churchills the promise of a visit to Cecilia during 
 the evening. 
 
188 KAVANAGH. 
 
 } 
 
 " Nothing done ! nothing done ! " exclaimed 
 he, as he wended his way homeward, musing and 
 meditating. cc And shall all these lofty aspira- 
 tions end in nothing ? Shall the arms be thus 
 stretched forth to encircle the universe, and come 
 back empty against a bleeding, aching breast ? " 
 
 And the words of the poet came into his 
 mind, and he thought them worthy to be written 
 in letters of gold, and placed above every door in 
 every house, as a warning, a suggestion, an in- 
 citement : 
 
 " Stay, stay the present instant ! 
 Imprint the marks of wisdom on its wings ! 
 0, let it not elude thy grasp, but like 
 The good old patriarch upon record, 
 Hold the fleet angel fast until he bless thee ! " 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 < J a 
 NTER-LIEF 
 
 J 
 1Y LOAN 
 
 21-100m-9,'48iB399sl6)476 
 
' 
 
 
 vV 
 
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