(P1F"P of George D. Bloc Class of 1892 LITTLE CLASSICS. " A series of exquisitely printed little -volumes in flexible binding and red edges, which gather up the very choicest things in our literature in the -way of short tales and sketches.'* Buffalo Courier. The Series includes 18 volumes, as follows: EXILE. INTELLECT. TRAGEDY. LIFE. LA UGHTER. LOVE. ROMANCE. MYSTERY. COMEDY. HEROISM. FORTUNE. NARRATIVE POEMS. LYRICAL POEMS. MINOR POEMS. NATURE. HUMANITY. A UTHORS. CHILDHOOD. 18 volumes, red edges, $1.00 each. The set in box, cloth, $18.00 ; half calf, or half morocco, $45.00. THE SAME : Two volumes in one, 9 vols., i6mo, in box, cloth, $13.50; half calf, $27.00; tree calf, $40 50. " No more delightful reading can be conceived than the polished and attractive papers that arj selected for this series." Boston Gazette. "Too much praise cannot be accorded the projectors of this work. It lays, for a very small sum, the cream of the best writers before the reader of average means. It usually happens that very few, except professional people and scholars, care to read all that even the most famous men have written. They want his best work, the one people talk most about, and when they have read that they are satisfied." N. Y. Com. Advertiser. ** For sale by Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on re- ceipt of price, by the Publishers, HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., BOSTON, MASS. rth Dctrtmc. LITTLE CLASSICS EDITED BY ROSSITER JOHNSON. LIFE. RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE. THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. JERRY JARVIS'S WlQ. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. DAVID SWAN. DREAMTHORP. A BACHELOR'S REVERY. THE GRAMMAR OF LIFE. MY CHATEAUX. DREAM-CHIL- DREN. THE MAN IN THE RESERVOIR. WEST- MINSTER ABBEY. THE PURITANS. GETTYSBURG. TWENTY-FOURTH EDITION. BOSTON : HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. CAMBRIDGE : PRINTK) AT THE RIVERSIDE PRESS. V CONTENTS. RAB AND HIS FRIENDS . . A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE . THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP JERRY JARVIS'S WIG . . . BEAUTY AND THE BEAST . . DAVID SWAN DREAMTHORP A BACHELOR'S REVERY . . THE GRAMMAR OF LIFE . . MY CHATEAUX DREAM-CHILDREN .... THE MAN IN THE RESERVOIR WESTMINSTER ABBEY . . . THE PURITANS GETTYSBURG . John Brown, M . D. . William D. Howells . . Bret Earte ... Richard Harris Barham Nathaniel Parker Willis Nathaniel Hawthorne Alexander Smith Donald G. Mitchell . Benjamin F. Taylor George William Curtis Charles Lamb Charles Fenno Hoffman Joseph Addison Thomas Babington Macaulay 203 Abraham Lincoln - . .207 PAGB 7 26 44 60 85 99 108 126 153 160 183 189 199 M236153 RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. BY JOHN BROWN, M. D. JOUR-AND-THIRTY years ago, Bob Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary Street, from the High School, our heads together, and our arms intertwisted as only lovers and boys know how or why. When we got to the top of the street, and turned north, we espied a crowd at the Tron Church. " A dog- fight ! " shouted Bob, and was off; and so was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over before we got up ! And is not this boy -nature ? and human nature too ? and don't we all wish a house on fire not to be out before we see it? Dogs like fighting; old Isaac says they " delight " in it, and for the best of all reasons ; and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight. They see three of the great cardinal virtues of dog or man courage, endurance, and skill in intense action. This is very different from a love of making dogs fight, and enjoying, and aggravating, and making gain by their pluck. A boy, be he never so fond himself of fight- ing, if he be a good boy, hates and despises all this, but he would have run off with Bob and me fast enough : it 8 LITTLE CLASSICS. is a natiu-al and a not -wicked interest that all boys and men have in witnessing intense energy in action. Does any curious and finely ignorant woman wish to know how Bob's eye at a glance announced a dog -fight to his brain ? He did not, he could not, see the dogs fight- ing ; it was a flash of an inference, a rapid induction. The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting is a crowd mascu- line mainly, with an occasional active, compassionate woman fluttering wildly round the outside, and using her tongue and her hands freely upon the men, as so many " brutes " ; it is a crowd annular, compact, and mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its eyes and its heads all bent downward and inward, to one common focus. Well, Bob and I are up, and find it is not over: a small thoroughbred -white bull-terrier is busy throt- tling a large shepherd's dog, unaccustomed to war, but not to be trifled with. They are hard at it ; the scien- tific little fellow doing his work in great style, his pas- toral enemy fighting wildly, but with the sharpest of teeth and a great courage. Science and breeding, however, soon had their own ; the Game Chicken, as the prema- ture Bob called him, working his way up, took his final grip of poor Yarrow's throat, and he lay gasping and done for. His master, a brown, handsome, big young shepherd from Tweedsmuir, would have liked to knock down any man, would " drink up Esil, or eat a croco- dile," for that part, if he had a chance. It was no use kicking the little dog ; that would only make him hold the closer. Many were the means shouted out in mouth- fuls of the best possible ways of ending it. " Water ! " BAB AND HIS FBIENDS. 9 but there was none near, and many cried for it who might have got it from the well at Blackfriars Wynd. " Bite the tail ! " and a large, vague, benevolent, middle- aged man, more desirous than wise, with some strug- gle got the bushy end of Yarrow's tail into his ample mouth, and bit it with all his might. This was more than enough for the much-enduring, much-perspiring shepherd, who, with a gleam of joy over his broad visage, delivered a terrific facer upon our large, vague, benevo- lent, middle-aged friend, who went down like a shot. StiU the Chicken holds ; death not far off. " Snuff! a pinch of snuff! " observed a calm, highly dressed young buck, with an eye-glass in his eye. " Snuff, indeed ! " growled the angry crowd, affronted and glaring. " Snuff ! a pinch of snuff ! " again observes the buck, but with more urgency ; whereupon were produced several open boxes, and from a mull which may have been at Cullo- den, he took a pinch, knelt down, and presented it to the nose of the Chicken. The laws of physiology and of snuff take their course ; the Chicken sneezes, and Yar- row is free. The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow in his arms, comforting him. But the Bull Terrier's blood is up, and his soul unsat- isfied ; he grips the first dog he meets, and discovering she is not a dog, in Homeric phrase, he makes a brief sort of amende, and is off. The boys, with Bob and me at their head, are after him: down Niddry Street he goes, bent on mischief ; up the Cowgate, like an arrow, Bob and I, and our small men, panting behind. There, under the single arch of the South Bridge, is a 1* 10 LITTLE CLASSICS. huge mastiff, sauntering dovrn the middle of the cause- way, as if with his hands in his pockets : he is old, gray, and brindled, as big as a little Highland bull, and has the Shakespearian dewlaps shaking as he goes. The Chicken makes straight at him, and fastens on his throat. To our astonishment, the great creature does nothing but stand still, hold himself up, and roar, yes, roar ; a long, serious, remonstrative roar. How is this ? Bob and I are up to them. He is muzzled ! The bailies had proclaimed a general muzzling, and his master, studying strength and economy mainly, had encompassed his huge jaws in a home-made apparatus, constructed out of the leather of some ancient breeching. His mouth was open as far as it could ; his lips curled up in rage, a sort of terrible grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the darkness ; the strap across his mouth tense as a bow-string ; his whole frame stiff with indig- nation and surprise ; his roar asking us all round, " Did you ever see the like of this ? " He looked a statue of anger and astonishment, done in Aberdeen granite. We soon had a crowd; the Chicken held on. "A knife ! " cried Bob ; and a cobbler gave him his knife. You know the kind of knife, worn away obliquely to a point, and always keen. I put its edge to the tense leather, it ran before it ; and then ! one sudden jerk of that enormous head, a sort of dirty mist about his mouth, no noise, and the bright and fierce little fellow is dropped, limp and dead. A solemn pause: this was more than any of us had bargained for. I turned the little fellow over, and saw he was quite dead : the mastiff had RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 11 taken him by the small of his back, like a rat, and broken it. He looked down at his victim, appeased, ashamed, and amazed ; snuffed him all over, stared at him, and taking a sudden thought, turned round and trotted off. Bob took the dead dog up, and said, " John, we '11 bury him after tea." " Yes," said I, and was off after the mas- tiff. He made up the Cowgate at a rapid swing ; he had forgotten some engagement. He turned up the Candle- maker Row, and stopped at the Harrow Inn. There was a carrier's cart ready to start, and a keen, thin, impatient, black -a-vised little man, his hand at his gray horse's head, looking about angrily for something. " Rab, ye thief ! " said he, aiming a kick at my great friend, who drew cringing up, and avoided the heavy shoe with more agility than dignity, and, watching his master's eye, slunk dismayed under the cart, his eais down, and as much as he had of tail down too. What a man this must be thought I to whom my tremendous hero turns tail ! The carrier saw the muz- zle hanging, cut and useless, from his neck, and I eagerly told him the story, which Bob and I always thought, and still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir Walter alone were worthy to rehearse. The severe little man was mitigated, and condescended to say, " Rab, ma man, puir Rabbie " ; whereupon the stump of a tail rose up, the ears were cocked, the eyes filled and were comforted ; the two friends were reconciled. " Hupp ! " and a stroke of the whip were given to Jess ; and off went the three. Bob and I buried the Game Chicken that night (we had not much of a tea) in the back-green of his house in 12 LITTLE CLASSICS. Melville Street, No. 17, with considerable gravity and silence ; and being at the time in the Iliad, and, like all boys, Trojans, we called him Hector, of course. Six years have passed, a long time for a boy and a dog: Bob Ainslie is off to the wars; I am a medical student, and clerk at Hinto House Hospital. Rab I saw almost every week, on the Wednesday ; and we had much pleasant intimacy. I found the way to his heart by frequent scratching of his huge head, and an occasional bone. When I did not notice him he would plaiit himself straight before me, and stand wagging that bud of a tail, and looking up, with his head a little to the one side. His master I occasionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John/ 5 but was laconic as any Spartan. One fine October afternoon, I was leaving the hospi- tal, when I saw the krge gate open, and in walked Rab, with that great and easy saunter of his. He looked as if taking general possession of the place ; like the Duke of Wellington entering a subdued city, satiated with victory and peace. After him came Jess, now white from age, with her cart ; and in it a woman carefully wrapped up, the carrier leading the horse anxiously, and looking back. When he saw me, James (for his name was James Noble) made a curt and grotesque "boo," and said, " Maister John, this is the mistress ; she 's got a trouble in her breest, some kind o' an income we 're thinkinV' ' By this time I saw the woman's face ; she was sitting on a sack filled with straw, her husband's plaid round RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 13 her, and his big-coat, with, its large white metal buttons, over her feet. I never saw a more unforgettable face, pale, serious, lonely, delicate, sweet, without being at all what we call fine. She looked sixty, and had on a mutch, white as snow, with its black ribbon, her silvery, smooth hair setting off her dark gray eyes, eyes such as one sees only twice or thrice in a lifetime, full of suffering, full also of the overcoming of it; her eyebrows black and delicate, and her mouth firm, patient, and contented, which few mouths ever are. As I have said, I never saw a more beautiful counte- nance, or one more subdued to settled quiet. " Ailie," said James, "this is Maister John, the young doctor; Rab's freend, ye ken. We often speak aboot you, doctor." She smiled, and made a movement, but said nothing, and prepared to come down, putting her plaid aside and rising. Had Solomon, in all his glory, been handing down the Queen of Sheba at his palace gate, he could not have done it more daintily, more tenderly, more like a gentleman, than did James the Howgate carrier, when he lifted down Ailie his wife. The contrast of his small, swarthy, weather-beaten, keen, worldly face to hers, pale, subdued, and beautiful, was something wonderful. Rab looked on concerned and puzzled, but ready for anything that might turn up, were it to strangle the nurse, the porter, or even me. Ailie and he seemed great friends. " As I was sayin', she 's got a kind o j trouble in her breest, doctor ; wull ye tak' a look at it ? " We walked into the consulting-room, all four; Rab grim and comic, 14 LITTLE CLASSICS. willing to be happy and confidential if cause could be shown, willing also to be the reverse, on the same terms. Ailie sat down, undid ner open gown and her lawn handkerchief round her neck, and, without a word, showed me her right breast. I looked at and examined it carefully; she and James watching me, and Uab eying all three. What could I say ? There it was, that had once been so soft, so shapely, so white, so bountiful, so " full of all blessed conditions," hard as a stone, a centre of horrid pain, making that pale face with its gray, lucid, reasonable eyes, and its sweet resolved mouth, express the full measure of suffering overcome. Why was that gentle, modest, sweet woman, clean and lova- ble, condemned by God to bear such a burden ? I got her away to bed. " May Rab and me bide ? " said James. " You may ; and Rab, if he will behave himself." " I 'se warrant he 's do that, doctor." And in slunk the faithful beast. I wish you could have seen him. There are no such dogs now. He belonged to a lost tribe. As I have said, he was brindled and gray like Rubislaw granite ; his hair short, hard, and close, like a lion's ; his body thick-set, like a little bull, a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, at the least ; he had a large, blunt head ; his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two being all he had gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it ; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leighton's father's ; BAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 15 the remaining eye had the power of two ; and above it, and in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear, which was forever unfurling itself like an old flag ; and then that bud of a tail, about one inch long, if it could in any sense be said to be long, being as broad as l on g } the mobility, the instantaneousness, of that bud were very funny and surprising, and its expressive twink- lings and winkings, the intercommunications between the eye, the ear, and it, were of the oddest and swiftest. Rab had the dignity and simplicity of great size ; and having fought his way all along the road to absolute supremacy, he was as mighty in his own line as Julius Csesar or the Duke of Wellington, and had the gravity of all great fighters. You must have observed the likeness of certain men to certain animals, and of certain dogs to men. Now, I never looked at Rab without thinking of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller. The same large, heavy, menacing, combative, sombre, honest counte- nance, the same deep inevitable eye, the same look, as of thunder asleep, but ready, neither a dog nor a man to be trifled with. Next day my master, the surgeon, examined Ailie. There was no doubt it must kill her, and soon. It could be removed ; it might never return ; it would give her speedy relief ; she should have it done. She courtesied, looked at James, and said, "When?" " To-morrow," said the kind surgeon, a man of few words. She and James and Rab and I retired. I noticed that he and she spoke little, but seemed to anticipate every- 16 LITTLE CLASSICS. thing in each other. The following day, at noon, the students came in, hurrying up the great stair. At the first landing-place, on a small, -well-known blackboard, was a bit of paper fastened with wafers, and many re- mains of old wafers beside it. On the paper were the words, " An operation to-day. J. B., Clerk." Up ran the youths, eager to secure good places ; in they crowded, full of interest and talk. " What 's the case?" "Which side is it?" Don't think them heartless: they are neither better nor worse than you or I ; they get over their professional horrors, and into their proper work ; and in them pity, as an emotion, ending in itself or at best in tears and a long-drawn breath, lessens ; while jnty as a motive is quickened, and gains power and purpose. It is well for poor human nature that it is so. The operating theatre is crowded ; much talk and fun, and all the cordiality and stir of youth. The surgeon with his staff of assistants is there. In comes Ailie; one look at her quiets and abates the eager students. That beautiful old woman is too much for them ; they sit down, and are dumb, and gaze at her. These rough boys feel the power of her presence. She walks in quickly, but without haste ; dressed in her mutch, her neckerchief, her white dimity short-gown, her black bombazine petticoat, showing her white stockings and her carpet-shoes. Behind her was James with Rab. James sat down in the distance, and took that huge and noble head between his knees. Rab looked perplexed and dangerous ; forever cocking his ear and dropping it as fast. RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 17 Ailie stepped up on a seat, and laid herself on the table, as her friend the surgeon told her arranged her- self, gave a rapid look at James, shut her eyes, rested herself on me, and took my hand. The operation was at once begun ; it was necessarily slow ; and chloroform one of God's best gifts to his suffering children was then unknown. The surgeon did his work. The pale face showed its pain, but was still and silent. Rab's soul was working within him ; he saw that something strange was going on, blood flowing from his mistress, and she suffering ; his ragged ear was up and importu- nate ; he growled and gave now and then a sharp, impatient yelp ; he would have liked to do something to that man. But James had him firm, and gave him a glower from time to time, and an intimation of a possible kick : all the better for James, it kept his eye and his mind off Ailie. It is over : she is dressed, steps gently and decently down from the table, looks for James ; then, turning to the surgeon and the students, she courtesies, and in a low, clear voice begs their pardon if she has behaved ill. The students all of us wept like children ; the sur- geon happed her up carefully ; and, resting on James and me, Ailie went to her room, Rab following. We put her to bed. James took off his heavy shoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capped, and put them carefully under the table, say- ing, ' ' Maister John, I 'm for nane o' yer strynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I '11 be her nurse, and 1 3 11 gang aboot on my stockin' soles as canny as pussy." And so he did ; and handy and clever, and swift and tender, as any B 18 LITTLE CLASSICS. woman was that horny-handed, snell, peremptory little man. Everything she got, he gave her; he seldom slept ; and often I saw his small, shrewd eyes out of the darkness fixed on her. As before, they spoke little. Rab behaved well, never moving, showing us how meek and gentle he could be, and occasionally, in his sleep, letting us know that he was demolishing some adversary. He took a walk with me every day, gener- ally to the Candlemaker Row ; but he was sombre and mild ; declined doing battle, though some fit cases of- fered, and indeed submitted to sundry indignities ; and was always very ready to turn, and came faster back, and trotted up the stair with much lightness, and went straight to that door. Jess, the mare, had been sent, with her weather-worn cart, to Howgate, and had doubtless her own dim and placid meditations and confusions on the absence of her master and Rab, and her unnatural freedom from the road and her cart. For some days Ailie did well. The wound healed " by the first intention " ; for, as James said, " Oor Ailie's skin 's ower clean to beil." The students came in quiet and anxious, and surrounded her bed. She said she liked to see their young, honest faces. The surgeon dressed her, and spoke to her in his own short, kind way, pitying her through his eyes, Rab and James outside the circle, Rab being now reconciled, and even cordial, and having made up his mind that as yet nobody re- quired worrying, but, as you may suppose, semper para- tus. So far, well: but, four days after the operation, my EAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 19 patient had a sudden and long shivering, a " groosin'," as she called it. I saw her soon after ; her eyes were too bright, her cheek colored; she was restless, and ashamed of being so ; the balance was lost ; mischief had begun. On looking at the wound, a blush of red told the secret; her pulse was rapid, her breathing anxious and quick, she wasn't herself, as she said, and was vexed at her restlessness. We tried what we could. James did everything, was everywhere, never in the way, never out of it. Rab subsided under the table into a dark place and was motionless, all but his eye, which followed every one. Ailie got worse; began to wan- der in her mind, gently ; was more demonstrative in her ways to James, rapid in her questions, and sharp at times. He was vexed, and said, " She was never that way afore ; no never." For a time she knew her head was wrong, and was always asking our pardon, the dear gentle old woman : then delirium set in strong, without pause. Her brain gave way, and then came that terrible spectacle, The intellectual power through words and things "Went sounding on its dim and perilous way; she sang bits of old songs and Psalms, stopping suddenly, mingling the Psalms of David, and the diviner words of his Son and Lord, with homely odds and ends and scraps of ballads. Nothing more touching, or in a sense more strangely beautiful, did I ever witness. Her tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager Scotch voice, the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utterance, the bright and 20 LITTLE CLASSICS. perilous eye ; some wild words, some household cares, something for James, the names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and in a " fremyt " voice, and he starting up, surprised, and slinking off as if he were to blame some- how, or had been dreaming he heard ; many eager ques- tions and beseechings which James and I could make nothing of, and on which she seemed to set her all, and then sink back ununderstood. It was very sad, but better than many things that are not called sad. James hovered about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever ; read to her, when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and metre, chanting the lat- ter in his own rude and serious way, showing great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and doating over her as his "ain Ailie." "Ailie, ma wo- man ! " " Ma ain bonnie wee dawtie ! " The end was drawing on ; the golden bowl was break- ing ; the silver cord was fast being loosed : that animula blandula, tagula, hospes, comesque, was about to flee. The body and soul companions for sixty years were being sundered, and taking leave. She was walking, alone, through the valley of the shadow into which one day we must all enter, and yet she was not alone, for we know whose rod and staff were comforting her. One night she had fallen quiet, and as we hoped asleep ; her eyes were shut. TTe put down the gas, and sat watching her. Suddenly she sat up in bed, and taking a bed-gown which was lying on it rolled up, she held it eagerly to her breast, to the right side. TTe could see her eyes bright with surprising tenderness and joy, bending over this bundle of clothes. She held it as RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 21 a woman holds her sucking child ; opening out her nightgown impatiently, and holding it close, and brood- ing over it, and murmuring foolish little words, as over one whom his mother comforteth, and who sucks and is satisfied. It was pitiful and strange to see her wasted, dying look, keen and yet vague, her immense love. " Preserve me ! " groaned James, giving way. And then she rocked back and forward, as if to make it sleep, hushing it, and wasting on it her infinite fondness. " Wae 's me, doctor^; I declare she 's thinkin' it J s that bairn." " What bairn ? " "The only bairn we ever had; our wee Mysie, and she 's in the Kingdom forty years and mair." It was plainly true ; the pain in the breast telling its urgent story to a bewildered, ruined brain, was misread and mistaken ; it suggested to her the uneasiness of a breast full of milk, and then the child ; and so again once more they were together, and she had her ain wee Mysie in her bosom. This was the close. She sank rapidly : the delirium left her ; but, as she whispered, she was " clean silly " : it was the lightning before the final darkness. After having for some time lain still, her eyes shut, she said, " James ! " He came close to her, and lifting up her calm, clear, beautiful eyes, she gave him a long look, turned to me kindly but shortly, looked for Rab, but could not see him, then turned to her husband again, as if she would never leave off looking, shut her eyes, and composed herself. She lay for some time breathing quick, and passed away so gently that when we thought 22 LITTLE CLASSICS. she was gone, James, in his old-fashioned way, held the mirror to her face. After a long pause, one small spot of dimness was breathed out ; it vanished away, and never returned, leaving the blank, clear darkness of the mirror without a stain. " What is our life ? it is even a vapor, which appeareth for a little time, and then van- isheth away." Rab all this time had been full awake and motion- less ; he came forward beside us : Ailie's hand, which James had held, was hanging down ; it was soaked with his tears ; Rab licked it all over carefully, looked at her, and returned to his place under the table. James and 1 sat, I don't know how long, but for some time, saying nothing. He started up abruptly, and with some noise went to the table, and putting his right fore and middle fingers each into a shoe, pulled them out, and put them on, breaking one of the leather latch- ets, and muttering in anger, " I never did the like o' that afore ! " I believe he never did ; nor after either. " Rab ! " he said -roughly, and pointing with his thumb to the bot- tom of the bed. Rab leapt up, and settled himself, his head and eye to the dead face. "Maister John, ye '11 wait for me," said the carrier, and disappeared in the darkness, thundering down stairs in his heavy shoes. I ran to a front window : there he was, already round the house and out at the gate, fleeing like a shadow. I was afraid about him, and yet not afraid ; so I sat down beside Rab, and, being wearied, fell asleep. I awoke from a sudden noise outside. It was November, and there had been a heavy fall of snow. Rab was in KAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 23 statu quo ; he heard the noise too, and plainly knew it, but never moved. I looked out ; and there, at the gate, in the dim morning, for the snn was not up, was Jess and the cart, a cloud of steam rising from the old mare. I did not see James ; he was already at the door, and came up the stairs, and met me. It was less than three hours since he left, and he must have posted out who knows how ? to Howgate, full nine miles off, yoked Jess, and driven her astonished into town. He had an armful of blankets, and was streaming with perspiration. He nodded to me, spread out on the floor two pairs of clean old blankets, having at their corners, " A. G., 1794," in large letters in red worsted. These were the initials of Alison Gramme, and James may have looked in at her from without himself unseen but not unthought of when he was " wat, wat, and weary," and after having walked many miles over the hills, may have seen her sitting while "a' the lave were sleepin'" ; and by the firelight working her name on the blankets, for her ain James's bed. He motioned Rab down, and, taking his wife in his arms, laid her in the blankets, and happed her carefully and firmly up, leaving the face uncovered ; and then lift- ing her, he nodded again sharply to me, and, with a re- solved but utterly miserable face, strode along the pas- sage, and down stairs, followed by Rab. I followed with a light ; but he did n't need it. I went out, holding stu- pidly the candle in my hand in the calm, frosty air ; we were soon at the gate. I could have helped him, but I saw he was not to be meddled with, and he was strong, and did not need it. He laid her down as tenderly, as LITTLE CLASSICS. safely, as he had lifted her out ten days before, as ten- derly as when he had her first in his arms when she was only " A. G.," sorted her, leaving that beautiful sealed face open to the heavens ; and then taking Jess by the head, he moved away. He did not notice me, neither did Rab, who presided behind the cart. I stood till they passed through the long shadow of the College, and turned up Nicholson Street. I heard the solitary cart sound through the streets, and die away and come again ; I returned, thinking of that company going up Libberton Brae, then along Roslin Muir, the morning light touching the Pentlands and making them like on-looking ghosts ; then down the hill through Auch- indinny woods, past " haunted Woodhouselee "; and as daybreak came sweeping up the bleak Lammermuirs, and fell on his own door, the company would stop, and James would take the key, and lift Ailie up again, laying her on her own bed, and, having put Jess up, would return with Rab and shut the door. James buried Ms wife with his neighbors mourning, Rab inspecting the solemnity from a distance. It was snow, and that black, ragged hole would look strange in the midst of the swelling, spotless cushion of white. James looked after everything; then rather suddenly fell ill, and took to bed ; was insensible when the doctor came, and soon died. A sort of low fever was prevailing in the village, and his want of sleep, his exhaustion, and his misery made him apt to take it. The grave was not difficult to reopen. A fresh fall of snow had again made all things white and smooth ; Rab once more looked on, and slunk home to the stable. RAB AND HIS FRIENDS. 25 And what of Rab ? I asked for him next week of the new carrier who got the good-will of James's business, and was now master of Jess and her cart. " How 's Rab ? " He put me off, and said rather rudely, " What 's your business wi' the dowg ? " I was not to be so put off. " Where 's Rab ? " He, getting confused and red, and intermeddling with his hair, said, " 'Deed, sir, Rab 's deid." "Dead! what did he die of?" "Weel, sir," said he, getting redder, "he didna exactly dee; he was killed. I had to brain him wi' a rack-pin ; there was nae doin' wi' him. He lay in the treviss wi' the mear, and wadna come oot. I tempit him wi' kail and meat, but he wad tak naething, and keepit me frae feedin' the beast, and he was aye gur gurrin', and grup gruppin' me by the legs. I was laith to make awa wi' the auld dowg, his like wasna atween this and Thornhill, but, 'deed, sir, I could do naething else." I believed him. Fit end for Rab, quick and complete. His teeth and his friends gone, why should he keep the peace and be civil ? VOL. IV- A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE. BY WILLIAM D. HOWELLS. JT was long past the twilight hour, which has been elsewhere mentioned as so oppressive in suburban places, and it was even too late for visitors, when a resident, whom I shall briefly describe as the Contributor, was startled by a ring at liis door, in the vicinity of one of our great maritime cities, say Plymouth or Manchester. As any thoughtful person would have done upon the like occasion, he ran over his acquaintance in his mind, speculating whether it were such or such a one, and dismissing the whole list of im- probabilities, before laying down the book he was read- ing, and answering the bell. TThen at last he did this, he was rewarded by the apparition of an utter stranger on his threshold, a gaunt figure of forlorn and curious smartness towering far above him, that jerked him a nod of the head, and asked if Mr. Hapford lived there. The face which the lamplight revealed was remarkable for a harsh two days' growth of beard, and a single bloodshot eye; yet it was not otherwise a sinister countenance, and there was something in the strange presence that A BOMANCE OF REAL LIFE. 27 appealed and touched. The contributor, revolving the facts vaguely in his mind, was not sure, after all, that j , was not the man's clothes rather than his expression that softened him towards the rugged visage : they were so tragically cheap, and the misery of helpless needlewomen and the poverty and ignorance of the purchaser were so apparent in their shabby newness, of which they appeared still conscious enough to have led the way to the very window, in the Semitic quarter of the city, where they had lain ticketed, "This nobby suit for $15." But the stranger's manner put both his face and his clothes out of mind, and claimed a deeper interest when, being answered that the person for whom he asked did not live there, he set his bristling lips hard together, and sighed heavily. " They told me/* he said, in a hopeless way, " that he lived on this street, and I 've been to every other house. I 'm very anxious to find him, Cap'n," the contributor, of course, had no claim to the title with which he was thus decorated, " for I 've a daughter living with him, and I want to see her; I 've just got home from a two years' voyage, and" there was a struggle of the Adam's-apple in the man's gaunt throat "I find she 's about all there is left of my family." How complex is every human motive ! This contribu- tor had been lately thinking, whenever he turned the pages of some foolish traveller, some empty prattler of Southern or Eastern lands, where all sensation was long ago exhausted, and the oxygen has perished from every sentiment, so has it been breathed and breathed again, that nowadays the wise adventurer sat down beside his 23 LITTLE CLASSICS. own register and waited for incidents to seek him out. It seemed to him that the cultivation of a patient and re- ceptive spirit was the sole condition needed to insure the occurrence of all manner of surprising facts within the range of one's own personal knowledge ; that not only the Greeks were at our doors, but the fairies and the genii, and all the people of romance, who had but to be hospitably treated in order to develop the deepest inter- est of fiction, and to become the characters of plots so ingenious that the most cunning invention were poor beside them. I myself am not so confident of this, and would rather trust Mr. Charles Reade, say, for my amusement than any chance combination of events. But I should be afraid to say how much his pride in the character of the stranger's sorrows, as proof of the cor- rectness of his theory, prevailed with the contributor to ask 1dm to come in and sit down ; though I hope that some abstract impulse of humanity, some compassionate and unselfish care for the man's misfortunes as misfor- tunes, was not wholly wanting. Indeed, the helpless simplicity with which he had confided his case might have touched a harder heart. " Thank you," said the poor fellow, after a moment's hesitation. "I believe I will come in. I 've been on foot all day, and after such a long voyage it makes a man dreadfully sore to walk about so much. Perhaps you can think of a ^Lr. Hap- ford living somewhere in the neighborhood." He sat down, and, after a pondering silence, in which he had remained with his head fallen upon his breast, " My name is Jonathan Tinker," he said, with the un- affected air which had already impressed the contributor, A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE. 29 and as if lie felt that some form of introduction was necessary, "and the girl that I want to find is Julia Tinker." Then he said, resuming the eventful personal history which the listener exulted while he regretted to hear : " You see, I shipped first to Liverpool, and there I heard from my family ; and then I shipped again for Hong-Kong, and after that I never heard a word: I seemed to miss the letters everywhere. This morning, at four o'clock, I left my ship as soon as she had hauled into the dock, and hurried up home. The house was shut, and not a soul in it ; and I did n't know what to do, and I sat down on the doorstep to wait till the neighbors woke up, to ask them what had become of my family. And the first one come out he told me my wife had been dead a year and a half, and the baby I 'd never seen, with her ; and one of my boys was dead ; and he did n't know where the rest of the children was, but he 'd heard two of the little ones was with a family in the city." The man mentioned these things with the half-apolo- getic air observable in a certain kind of Americans when some accident obliges them to confess the infirmity of the natural feelings. They do not ask your sympathy, and you offer it quite at your own risk, with a chance of having it thrown back upon your hands. The con- tributor assumed the risk so far as to say, " Pretty rough ! " when the stranger paused ; and perhaps these homely words were best suited to reach the homely heart. The man's quivering lips closed hard again, a kind of spasm passed over his dark face, and then two very small drops of brine shone upon his weather-worn 30 LITTLE CLASSICS. cheeks. This demonstration, into which he had been surprised, seemed to stand for the passion of tears into which the emotional races fall at such times. He opened his lips with a kind of dry click, and went on : " I hunted about the whole forenoon in the city, and at last I found the children. I 'd been gone so long they did n't know me, and somehow I thought the peo- ple they were with weren't over-glad I'd turned up. Finally the oldest child told me that Julia was living with a Mr. Hapford on this street, and I started out here to-night to look her up. If I can find her, I 'm all right. I can get the family together, then, and start new." "It seems rather odd," mused the listener aloud, " that the neighbors let them break up so, and that they should all scatter as they did." "Well, it ain't so curious as it seems, Cap'n. There was money for them at the owners', all the time ; I 'd left part of my wages when 1 sailed ; but they did n't know how to get at it, and what could a parcel of chil- dren do ? Julia 's a good girl, and when I find her I 'm all right." The writer could only repeat that there was no Mr. Hapford living on that street, and never had been, so far as he knew. Yet there might be such a person in the neighborhood ; and they would go out together, and ask at some of the houses about. But the stranger must first take a glass of wine ; for he looked used up. The sailor awkwardly but civilly enough protested that he did not want to give so much trouble, but took the glass, and, as he put it to his lips, said formally, as A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE. 31 if it were a toast or a kind of grace, " I hope I may have the opportunity of returning the compliment." The con- tributor thanked him ; though, as he thought of all the circumstances of the case, and considered the cost at which the stranger had come to enjoy his politeness, he felt little eagerness to secure the return of the compli- ment at the same price, and added, with the consequence of another set phrase, " Not at all." But the thought had made him the more anxious to befriend the luckless soul fortune had cast in his way ; and so the two sallied out together, and rang door-bells wherever lights were still seen burning in the windows, and asked the aston- ished people who answered their summons whether any Mr. Hapford were known to live in the neighborhood. And although the search for this gentleman proved vain, the contributor could not feel that an expedition which set familiar objects in such novel lights was alto- gether a failure. He entered so intimately into the cares and anxieties of his protege, that at times he felt himself in some inexplicable sort a shipmate of Jonathan Tinker, and almost personally a partner of his calamities. The estrangement of all things which takes place, within doors and without, about midnight, may have helped to qast this doubt upon his identity; he seemed to be visiting now for the first time the streets and neighbor- hoods nearest his own, and his feet stumbled over the accustomed walks. In his quality of houseless wanderer, and, so far as appeared to others, possibly, worth- less vagabond, he also got a new and instructive effect upon the faces which, in his real character, he knew so well by their looks of neighborly greeting ; and it is his 32 LITTLE CLASSICS. belief that the first hospitable prompting of the human heart is to shut the door in the eyes of homeless strangers who present themselves after eleven o'clock. By that time the servants are all abed, and the gentleman of the house answers the bell, and looks out with a loath and bewildered face, which gradually changes to one of sus- picion, and of wonder as to what those fellows can possi- bly want of him, till at last the prevailing expression is one of contrite desire to atone for the first reluctance by any sort of service. The contributor professes to have observed these changing phases in the visages of those whom he that night called from their dreams, or arrested in the act of going to bed ; and he drew the conclusion very proper for his imaginable connection with the garroting and other adventurous brotherhoods that the most flattering moment for knocking on the head people who answer a late riug at night is either in their first selfish bewilderment, or their final self-abandonment to their better impulses. It does not seem to have oc- curred to him that he would himself have been a much more favorable subject for the predatory arts than any of his neighbors, if his shipmate, the unknown companion of his researches for Mr. Hapford, had been at all so minded. But the faith of the gaunt giant upon which he reposed was good, and the contributor continued to wan- der about with him in perfect safety. Not a soul among those they asked had ever heard of a Mr. Hapford, far less of a Julia Tinker living with him. But they all listened to the contributor's explanation with interest and eventual sympathy; and in truth, briefly told, with a word now and then thrown in by Jonathan Tinker, A EOMANCE OF BEAL LIFE. 33 who kept at the bottom of the steps, showing like a gloomy spectre in the night, or, in his grotesque length and gauntness, like the other's shadow cast there by the lamplight, it was a story which could hardly fail to awaken pity. At last, after ringing several bells where there were no lights, in the mere wantonness of good-will, and going away before they could be answered (it would be enter- taining to know what dreams they caused the sleepers within), there seemed to be nothing for it but to give up the search till morning, and go to the main street and wait for the last horse-car to the city. Thera, seated upon the curbstone, Jonathan Tinker, being plied with a few leading questions, told in hints and scraps the story of his hard life, which was at present that of a second mate, and had been that of a cabin-boy and of a seaman before the mast. The second mate's place he held to be the hardest aboard ship. You got only a few dollars more than the men, and you did not rank with the officers ; you took your meals alone, and in everything you belonged by yourself. The men did not respect you, and sometimes the captain abused you awfully before the passengers. The hardest captain that Jonathan Tinker ever sailed with was Captain Gooding of the Cape. It had got to be so that no man would ship second mate under Captain Gooding ; and Jonathan Tinker was with him only one voyage. When he had been home awhile, he saw an advertisement for a second mate, and he went round to the owners'. They had kept it secret who the captain was ; but there was Cap- tain Gooding in the owners' office. " Why, here 's the 2* 34 LITTLE CLASSICS. man, now, that I want for a second mate/' said he, when Jonathan Tinker entered ; " he knows me." " Captain Gooding, I know von 'most too well to want to sail under you," answered Jonathan. " I might go if I had n't been with YOU one voyage too many already." " And then the men ! " said Jonathan, " the men coming aboard drunk, and having to be pounded sober ! And the hardest of the fight falls on the second mate ! Why, there is n't an inch of me that has n't been cut over or smashed into a jell. I 've had three ribs broken ; I 've got a scar from a knife on my cheek ; and I 've been stabbed bad enough, half a dozen times, to lay me up." Here he gave a sort of desperate laugh, as if the no- tion of so much misery and such various mutilation were too grotesque not to be amusing. " Well, what can you do ? " he went on. " If you don't strike, the men think you 're afraid of them ; and so you have to begin hard and go on hard. I always tell a man, ' Xow, my man, I always begin with a man the way I mean to keep on. You do your duty and you're all right. But if you don't ' Well, the men ain't Americans any more, Dutch, Spaniards, Chinese, Portugee, and it ain't like abusing a white man." Jonathan Tinker was plainly part of the horrible tyranny which we all know exists on shipboard ; and his listener respected him the more that, though he had heart enough to be ashamed of it, he was too honest not to own it, Why did he still follow the sea ? Because he did not know what else to do. When he was younger, he used A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE. 35 to love it, but now he hated it. Yet there was not a prettier life in the world if you got to be captain. He used to hope for that once, but not now; though he thought he could navigate a ship. Only let him get his family together again, and he would yes, he would try to do something ashore. No car had yet come in sight, and so the contributor suggested that they should walk to the car-office, and look in the Directory which is kept there for the name of Hapford, in search of whom it had already been ar- ranged that they should renew their acquaintance on the morrow. Jonathan Tinker, when they had reached the office, heard with constitutional phlegm that the name of the Hapford for whom he inquired was not in the Direc- tory. " Never mind," said the other, " come round to my house in the morning. We '11 find him yet." So they parted with a shake of the hand, the second mate saying that he believed he should go down to the vessel and sleep aboard, if he could sleep, and murmuring at the last moment the hope of returning the compliment, while the other walked homeward, weary as to the flesh, but, in spite of his sympathy for Jonathan Tinker, very elate in spirit. The truth is, and however disgraceful to human nature, let the truth still be told, he had re- curred to his primal satisfaction in the man as calamity capable of being used for such and such literary ends, and, while he pitied him, rejoiced in him as an episode of real life quite as striking and complete as anything in fiction. It was literature made to his hand. Nothing could be better, he mused ; and once more he passed the details of the story in review, and beheld all those pio- 36 LITTLE CLASSICS. tures which the poor fellow's artless words had so vividly conjured up: he saw him leaping ashore in the gray summer dawn as soon as the ship hauled into the dock, and making his way, with his vague sea-legs unaccus- tomed to the pavements, up through the silent and empty city streets ; he imagined the tumult of fear and hope which the sight of the man's home must have caused in him, and the benumbing shock of finding it blind and deaf to all his appeals ; he saw him sitting down upon what had been his own threshold, and waiting in a sort of bewildered patience till the neighbors should be awake, while the noises of the streets gradually arose, and the wheels began to rattle over the stones, and the milkman and the ice-man came and went, and the waiting figure began to be stared at, and to challenge the curiosity of the passing policeman; he fancied the opening of the neighbor's door, and the slow, cold understanding of the case ; the manner, whatever it was, in which the sailor was told that one year before his wife had died, with her babe, and that his children were scattered, none knew where. As the contributor dwelt pityingly upon these things, but at the same time estimated their aesthetic value one by one, he drew near the head of his street, and found himself a few paces behind a boy slouching onward through the night, to whom he called out, ad- venturously, and with no real hope of information, " Do you happen to know anybody on this street by the name of Hapford ? " " Why no, not in this town," said the boy ; but he added that there was a street by the same name in a neighboring suburb, and a Hapford living on it. A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE. 37 "By Jove!" thought the contributor, "this is more like literature than ever " ; and he hardly knew whether to be more provoked at his own stupidity in not thinking of a street of the same name in the next village, or delighted at the element of fatality which the fact intro- duced into the story ; for Tinker, according to his own account, must have landed from the cars a few rods from the very door he was seeking, and so walked far- ther and farther from it every moment. He thought the case so curious, that he laid it briefly before the boy, who, however he might have been inwardly affected, was suf- ficiently true to the national traditions not to make the smallest conceivable outward sign of concern in it. At home, however, the contributor related his adven- tures and the story of Tinker's life, adding the fact that he had just found out where Mr. Hapford lived. "It was the only touch wanting," said he ; " the whole thing is now perfect." "It's too perfect," was answered from a sad enthu- siasm. "Don't speak of it ! I can't take it in." " But the question is," said the contributor, penitently taking himself to task for forgetting the hero of these excellent misfortunes in his delight over their perfection, " how am I to sleep to-night, thinking of that poor soul's suspense and uncertainty ? Never mind, I '11 be up early, and run over and make sure that it is Tinker's Hapford, before he gets out here, and have a pleasant surprise for him. Would it not be a justifiable coup de theatre to fetch his daughter here, and let her answer his ring at the door when he comes in the morning ? " This plan was discouraged. " No, no ; let them meet 33 LITTLE CLASSICS. in their own way. Just take him to Hapford's house and leave him/' " Very well. But he 's too good a character to lose sight of. He 's got to come back here and tell us what he intends to do." The birds, next morning, not having had the second mate on their minds either as an unhappy man or a most fortunate episode, but having slept long and soundly, were singing in a very sprightly way in the wayside trees ; and the sweetness of their notes made the con- tributor's heart light as he climbed the hill and rang at Mr. Hapford's door. The door was opened by a young girl of fifteen or sixteen, whom he knew at a glance for the second mate's daughter, but of whom, for form's sake, he asked if there were a girl named Julia Tinker living there. "My name's Julia Tinker," answered the maid, who had rather a disappointing face. " Well," said the contributor, " your father's got back from his Hong-Kong voyage." " Hong-Kong voyage ? " echoed the girl, with a stare of helpless inquiry, but no other visible emotion. " Yes. He had never heard of your mother's death. He came home yesterday morning, and was looking for you all day." Julia Tinker remained open-mouthed but mute ; and the other was puzzled at the want of feeling shown, which he could not account for even as a national trait. " Perhaps there 's some mistake," he said. " There must be," answered Julia : " my father has n't been to sea for a good many years. My father," she A ROMANCE Ol' REAL LIFE. 39 added, with a diffidence indescribably mingled with a sense of distinction, " my father's in State's Prison. What kind of looking man was this ? " The contributor mechanically described him. Julia Tinker broke into a loud, hoarse laugh. " Yes, it 's him, sure enough." And then, as if the joke were too good to keep : " Miss Hapford, Miss Hapford, father 's got out. Do come here ! " she called into a back room. When Mrs. Hapford appeared, Julia fell back, and, having deftly caught a fly on the door-post, occupied herself in plucking it to pieces, while she listened to the conversation of the others. " It 's all true enough," said Mrs. Hapford, when the writer had recounted the moving story of Jonathan Tinker, " so far as the death of his wife and baby goes. But he has n't been to sea for a good many years, and he must have just come out of State's Prison, where he was put for bigamy. There 's always two sides to a story, you know ; but they say it broke his first wife's heart, and she died. His friends don't want him to find his children, and this girl especially." " He 's found his children in the city," said the con- tributor, gloomily, being at a loss what to do or say, in view of the wreck of his romance. " O, he 's found 'em, has he ? " cried Julia, with heightened amusement. " Then he '11 have me next, if I don't pack and go." " I 'm very, very sorry," said the contributor, secretly resolved never to do another good deed, no matter how temptingly the opportunity presented itself. " But you may depend he won't find out from tne where you are. 40 LITTLE L Of course I had no earthly reason for supposing his story was not true." " Of course," said kind-hearted Mrs. Hapford, mingling a drop of honey with the gall in the contributor's soul, " you only did your duty." And indeed, as he turned away, he did not feel al- together without compensation. However Jonathan Tinker had fallen in his esteem as a man, he had even risen as literature. The episode which had appeared so perfect in its pathetic phases did not seem less finished as a farce ; and this person, to whom all things of every- day life presented themselves in periods more or less rounded, and capable of use as facts or illustrations, could not but rejoice in these new incidents., as dramat- ically fashioned as the rest. It occurred to him that, wrought into a story, even better use might be made of the facts now than before, for they had developed ques- tions of character and of human nature which could not fail to interest. The more he pondered upon his acquaintance with Jonathan Tinker, the more fascinating the erring mariner became, in his complex truth and falsehood, his delicately blending shades of artifice and nalcete. He must, it was felt, have believed to a certain point in his own inventions : nay, starting with that groundwork of truth, the fact that his wife was reallv dead, and that he had not seen his family for two years, why should he not place implicit faith in all the fic- tions reared upon it : It was probable that he felt a real sorrow for her loss, and tliat he found a fair consolation in depicting the circumstances of her death so that they should look like his inevitable misfortunes A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE. 41 rather than his faults. He might well have repented his offence during those two years of prison ; and why should he not now cast their dreariness and shame out of his memory, and replace them with the freedom and adven- ture of a two years' voyage to China, so probable, in all respects, that the fact should appear an impossible nightmare ? In the experiences of his life he had abun- dant material to furnish forth the facts of such a voyage, and in the weariness and lassitude that should follow a day's walking equally after a two years' voyage and two years' imprisonment, he had as much physical proof in favor of one hypothesis as the other. It was doubtless true, also, as he said, that he had gone to his house at dawn, and sat down on the threshold of his ruined home ; and perhaps he felt the desire he had expressed to see his daughter, with a purpose of beginning life anew; and it may have cost him a veritable pang when he found that his little ones did not know him. All the sentiments of the situation were such as might persuade a lively fancy of the truth, of its own inventions ; and as he heard these continually repeated by the contributor in their search for Mr. Hapford, they must have acquired an objective force and repute scarcely to be resisted. At the same time, there were touches of nature throughout Jonathan Tin- ker's narrative which could not fail to take the faith of another. The contributor, in reviewing it, thought it particularly charming that his mariner had not overdrawn himself or attempted to paint his character otherwise than as it probably was ; that he had shown his ideas and practices of life to be those of a second mate, nor more nor less, without the gloss of regret or the pretences to 42 LITTLE CLASSICS. refinement that might be pleasing to the supposed philanthropist with whom he had fallen in. Captain Gooding was of course a true portrait, and there was nothing in Jonathan Tinker's statement of the relations of a second mate to his superiors and his inferiors which did not agree perfectly with what the writer had just read in " Two Years before the Mast," a book which had possibly cast its glamour upon the adventure. He admired also the just and perfectly characteristic air of grief in the bereaved husband and father, those occasional escapes from the sense of loss into a brief hilarity and forgetfulness, and those relapses into the hovering gloom, which every one has observed in this poor, crazy human nature when oppressed by sorrow, and which it would have been hard to simulate. But, above all, he exulted in that supreme stroke of the imagination given by the second mate when, at parting, he said he believed he would go down and sleep on board the vessel. In view of this, the State's Prison theory almost appeared a malign and foolish scandal. Yet even if this theory were correct, was the second mate wholly answerable for beginning his life again with the imposture he had practised ? The contributor bad either so fallen in love with the literary advantages of his forlorn deceiver that he would see no moral obliquity in him, or he had touched a subtler verity at last in ponder- ing the affair. It seemed now no longer a farce, but had a pathos which, though very different from that of its first aspect, was hardly less tragical. Knowing with what coldness, or, at the best, uncaudor, he (representing Society in its attitude toward convicted Error) would A ROMANCE OF EEAL LIFE. 43 have met the fact had it been owned to him at first, he had not virtue enough to condemn the illusory stranger, who must have been helpless to make at once evident any repentance he felt or good purpose he cherished. Was it not one of the saddest consequences of the man's past, a dark necessity of misdoing, that, even with the best will in the world to retrieve himself, his first endeavor must involve a wrong ? Might he not, indeed, be considered a martyr, in some sort, to his own admira- ble impulses ? I can see clearly enough where the con- tributor was astray in this reasoning, but I can also understand how one accustomed to value realities only as they resembled fables should be won with such pensive sophistry ; and I can certainly sympathize with his feeling that the mariner's failure to reappear according to ap- pointment added its final and most agreeable charm to the whole affair, and completed the mystery from which the man emerged and which swallowed him up again. THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. BY BRET HARTE. I HERE was commotion in Roaring Camp. It j^l could not have been a fight ; for in 1850 these were not novel enough to call together the en- tire settlement. The ditches and claims were not only deserted, but Tuttle's grocery had contributed its gam- blers, who, it will be remembered, calmly continued their game the day that French Pete and Kanaka Joe shot each other to death over the bar in the front room. The whole camp was collected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of the clearing. Conversation was carried on in a low tone, but the name of a woman was frequently repeated. It was a name familiar enough in the camp : " Cherokee Sal." Perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a coarse, and, it is to be feared, a very sinful woman. But at that time she was the only woman in Roaring Camp, and was just then lying in sore extremity when she most needed the ministration of her own sex. Dis- solute, abandoned, and irreclaimable, she was yet suffer- ing a martyrdom, hard enough to bear even in the se- clusion and sexual sympathy with which custom veils it, THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 45 but now terrible in her loneliness. The primal curse had come to her in that original isolation which must have made the punishment of the first transgression so dreadful. It was, perhaps, part of the expiation of her sin, that at a moment when she most lacked her sex's intuitive sympathy and care, she met only the half-con- temptuous faces of masculine associates. Yet a few of the spectators were, I think, touched by her sufferings. Sandy Tipton thought it was "rough on Sal," and in the contemplation of her condition for a moment rose superior to the fact that he had an ace and two bowers in his sleeve. It will be seen, also, that the situation was novel. Deaths were by no means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing. People had been dismissed the camp effectively, finally, and with no possibility of return, but this was the first time that anybody had been introduced ab initio. Hence the excitement. " You go in there, Stumpy," said a prominent citizen known as " Kentuck," addressing one of the loungers. " Go in there and see what you kin do. You 've had experience in them things." Perhaps there was a fitness in the selection. Stumpy, in other climes, had been the putative head of two fami- lies ; in fact, it was to some legal informality in these proceedings that Roaring Camp a city of refuge was indebted for his company. The crowd approved the choice, and Stumpy was wise enough to bow to the majority. The door closed on the extempore surgeon and midwife, and Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked its pipe, and awaited the issue. 46 LITTLE CLASSICS. The assemblage numbered about a hundred men. One or two of these were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all were reckless. Physically, they exhibited no indications of their past lives and character. The greatest scamp had a Raphael face, with a profusion of blond hair ; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air and intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet ; the coolest and most courageous man was scarcely over five feet in height, with a soft voice and an embarrassed, timid man- ner. The term " roughs," applied to them, was a dis- tinction rather than a definition. Perhaps in the minor details of fingers, toes, ears, etc., the camp may have been deficient, but these slight omissions did not detract from their aggregate force. The strongest man had but three fingers on his right hand ; the best shot had but one eye. Such was the physical aspect of the men that were dispersed around the cabin. The camp lay in a triangu- lar valley, between two hills and a river. The only out- let was a steep trail over the summit of a hill that faced the cabin now illuminated by the rising moon. The suffering woman might have seen it from the rude bunk whereon she lay, seen it winding like a silver thread until it was lost in the stars above. A fire of withered pine boughs added sociability to the gathering. By degrees the natural levity of Roaring Camp returned. Bets were freely offered and taken regarding the result. Three to five that " Sal would get through with it " ; even that the child would survive ; side bets as to the sex and complexion of the coming stranger. In the midst of an excited discussion an THE LUCK OP KOAIIING CAMP. 47 exclamation came from those nearest the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moan- ing of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of the fire, rose a sharp, querulous cry, a cry unlike anything heard before in the camp. The pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as if nature had stopped to listen too. The camp rose to its feet as one man. It was pro- posed to explode a barrel of gunpowder; but, in consid- eration of the mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were discharged. Tor, whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour she had climbed, as it were, that rugged road that led to the stars, and so passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame, forever. I do not think that the announce- ment disturbed them much, except in speculation as to the fate of the child. " Can he live now ? " was asked of Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal's sex and maternal condition in the settlement was an ass. There was some conjecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. It was less problematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and apparently as successful. When these details were completed, which exhausted another hour, the door was opened, and the anxious crowd, who had already formed themselves into a queue, entered in single file. Beside the low bunk or shelf, on which the figure of the mother was starkly outlined below the blankets, stood a pine table. On this a candle- 48 LITTLE CLASSICS. box was placed, and within it, swathed in staring red flannel, lay the last arrival at Roaring Camp. Besida the candle-box was placed a hat. Its use was soon indi- cated. "Gentlemen," said Stumpy, with a singular mixturp of authority and ex qfficio complacency, " gentlemen will please pass in at the front door. Them as wishe? to contribute anything toward the orphan will find a hat handy." The first man entered with his hat on ; he imcoyeredj however, as he looked about him, and so, unconsciously, set an example to the next. In such communities good and bad examples are catching. As the procession filed in, comments were audible, criticisms addressed, per- haps, rather to Stumpy, in the character of showman: " Is that him ? " " Mighty small specimen " ; " Has n't mor'n got the color " ; " Ain't bigger than a derringer." The contributions were as characteristic, a silver to- bacco-box ; a doubloon ; a navy revolver, silver mounted ; a gold specimen ; a very beautifully embroidered lady's handkerchief (from Oakhurst, the gambler) ; a diamond breastpin ; a diamond ring (suggested by the pin, with the remark from the giver that he " saw the pin and went two diamonds better ") ; a slung-shot ; a Bible (contributor not detected) ; a golden spur ; a silver tea- spoon (the initials, I regret to say, were not the giver's) ; a pair of surgeon's shears ; a lancet ; a Bank of England note for 5 ; and about $ 200 in loose gold and silver coin. During these proceedings Stumpy maintained a silence as impassive as the dead on his left, a gravity as inscru- THE LUCK OF EOARING CAMP. 49 table as that of the newly-born on his right. Oniy one accident occurred to break the monotony of th? curious procession. As Kentuck bent over the candle-box, half curiously, the child turned, and in a spasm of pain caught at his groping finger, and held it fast for a moment. Kentuck looked foolish and embarrassed. Something like a blush tried to assert itself in his weather-beaten cheek. "The d d little cuss!" he said, as he extri- cated his finger, with perhaps more tenderness and care than he might have been deemed capable of showing. He held that finger a little apart from its fellows as IIG went out and examined it curiously. The examination provoked the same original remark in regard to the child. In fact, he seemed to enjoy repeating it. "He rastled with my finger," he remarked to Tipton, holding up the member, " the d d little cuss ! " It was four o'clock before the camp sought repose. A light burned in the cabin where the watchers sat, for Stumpy did not go to bed that night. Nor did Kentuck. He drank quite freely, and related with great gusto his experience, invariably ending with his characteristic con- demnation of the new-comer. It seemed to relieve him of the unjust implication of sentiment, and Kentuck had the weakness of the nobler sex. When everybody else had gone to bed, he walked down to the river and whistled reflectively. Then he walked up the gulch, past the cabin, still whistling with demonstrative uncon- cern. At a large red-wood tree he paused, and retraced his steps, and again passed the cabin. Half-way down to the river's bank he again paused, and then returned and knocked at the door. It was opened by Stumpy, VOL. IV. 3 D 50 LITTLE CLASSICS. " How goes it ? " said Kentuck, looking past Stamp*, toward the candle-box. " All serene," replied Stumpy. " Anything up ? " " Nothing." There was a pause, an embarrassing one, Stumpy still holding the door. Then Keutuck had recourse to his finger, which he held up to Stumpy. " Rastled with it the demd little cuss," he said, and retired. The next day, Cherokee Sal had such rude sepulture as Roaring Camp afforded. After her body had been committed to the hillside, there was a formal meeting of the camp to discuss what should be done with her infant. A resolution to adopt it was unanimous and enthusiastic. But an animated discussion in regard to the manner and feasibility of providing for its wants at once sprang up. It was remarkable that the argument partook of none of those fierce personalities with which discussions were usually conducted at Roaring Camp. Tipton proposed that they should send the child to Red Dog, a distance of forty miles, where female attention could be pro- cured. But the unlucky suggestion met with fierce and unanimous opposition. It was evident that no plan which entailed parting from their new acquisition would for a moment be entertained. "Beside," said Tom Ryder, "them fellows at Red Dog would swap it and ring in somebody else on us." A disbelief in the honesty of other camps prevailed at Roaring Camp, as in other places. The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met with objection. It was argued that no decent wo- THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 51 man could be prevailed to accept Roaring Camp as her home, and the speaker urged that " they did n't want any more of the other kind." This unkind allusion to the defunct mother, harsh as it may seem, was the first spasm of propriety, the first symptom of the camp's regeneration. Stumpy advanced nothing. Perhaps he felt a certain delicacy in interfering with the selection of a possible successor in office. But when questioned he averred stoutly that he and "Jinny" the mammal before al- luded to could manage to rear the child. There was something original, independent, and heroic about the plan, that pleased the camp. Stumpy was retained. Cer- tain articles were sent for to Sacramento. "Mind," said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of gold-dust into the expressman's hand, " the best that can be got lace, you know, and filigree-work and frills ; d n the cost ! " Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invig- orating climate of the mountain camp was compensation for maternal deficiencies. Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foot-hills, that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial, at once bracing and exhilarating, he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle chem- istry that transmuted ass's milk to lime and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good nursing. " Me and that ass," he would say, " has been father and mother to him ! Don't you," he would add, apostrophizing the helpless burden before him, "never go back on us." By the time he was a month old the necessity of giving 52 LITTLE CLASSICS. him a name became apparent. He had generally been known as " the kid," " Stumpy's boy," " the Cayote " (an allusion to his vocal powers), and even by Kentuck's endearing diminutive of "the d d little cuss." But these were felt to be vague and unsatisfactory, and were at last dismissed under another influence. Gamblers and adventurers are generally superstitious, and Oak- hurst one day declared that the baby had brought " the luck " to Roaring Camp. It was certain that of late they had been successful. " Luck " was the name agreed upon, with the prefix of "Tommy" for greater con- venience. No allusion was made to the mother, and the father was unknown. " It 's better," said the phil- osophical Oakhurst, "to take a fresh deal all around. Call him Luck and start him fair." A day was accordingly set apart for the christening. What was meant by this ceremony the reader may im- agine who has already gathered some idea of the reckless irreverence of Roaring Camp. The master of ceremonies was one " Boston," a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the greatest facetiousness. This ingenious satirist had spent two days in preparing a burlesque of the church service, with pointed local allusions. The choir was properly trained, and Sandy Tipton was to stand godfather. But after the procession had marched to the grove with music and banners, and the child had been deposited before a mock altar, Stumpy stepped be- fore the expectant crowd. " It ain't my style to spoil fun, boys," said the little man, stoutly eying the faces around him, "but it strikes me that this thing ain't ex- actly on a square. It 's playing it pretty low down on THE LUCK OF EOAEING CAMP. 53 (his yer baby to ring in fun on him that he ain't a-going to understand. And ef there 's going to be any godfather round, I 'd like to see who 's got any better rights than me." A silence followed Stumpy's speech. To the credit of all humorists be it said that the first man to acknowledge its justice was the satirist, thus estopped of his fun. " But," said Stumpy, quickly, following up his advan- tage, " we 're here for a christening, and we '11 have it. I proclaim you Thomas Luck, according to the laws of the United States and the State of California, so help me God." It was the first time that the name of the Deity had been uttered aught but profanely in the camp. The form of christening was perhaps even more ludicrous than the satirist had conceived, but, strangely enough, nobody saw it and nobody laughed. Tommy was christened as seriously as he would have been under a Christian roof, and cried and was comforted in as orthodox fash- ion. And so the work of regeneration began in Roaring Camp. Almost imperceptibly a change came over the settlement. The cabin assigned to Tommy Luck or The Luck as he was more frequently called first showed signs of improvement. It was kept scrupu- lously clean and whitewashed. Then it was boarded, lathed, and papered. The rosewood cradle packed eighty miles by mule had, in Stumpy's way of putting it, " sorter killed the rest of the furniture." So the re- habilitation of the cabin became a necessity. The men who were in the habit of lounging in at Stumpy's to 54 LITTLE CLASSICS. see " how The Luck got on," seemed to appreciate the change, and, in self-defence, the rival establishment of Tuttle's grocery bestirred itself, and imported a carpet and mirrors. The reflections of the latter on the appear- ance of Roaring Camp tended to produce stricter habits of personal cleanliness. Again, Stumpy imposed a kind of quarantine upon those who aspired to the honor and privilege of holding The Luck. It was a cruel morti- fication to Kentuck who, in the carelessness of a large nature, and the habits of a frontier life, had begun to regard all garments as a second cuticle, which, like a snake's, only sloughed off through decay to be debarred this privilege from certain prudential reasons. Yet such was the subtle influence of innovation, that he thereafter appeared regularly every afternoon in a clean shirt, and face still shining from his ablutions. Nor were moral and social sanitary laws neglected. Tommy, who was supposed to spend his whole existence in a persistent attempt to repose, must not be disturbed by noise. The shouting and yelling which had gained the camp its in- felicitous title were not permitted within hearing distance of Stumpy's. The men conversed in whispers, or smoked in Indian gravity. Profanity was tacitly given up in those sacred precincts, and throughout the camp a popu- lar form of expletive, known as " D n the luck ! " and " Curse the luck ! " was abandoned, as having a new personal bearing. Vocal music was not interdicted, be- ing supposed to have a soothing, tranquillizing quality ; and one song, sung by " Man-o'-War Jack," an English sailor, from her Majesty's Australian colonies, was quite popular as a lullaby. It was a lugubrious recital of the THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP. 55 exploits of "the Aretliusia seventy -four," in a muffled minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse, " On b-o-o-o-ard of the Arethusia." It was a fine sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side to side as if with the motion of a ship, and crooning forth this naval ditty. Either through the pe- culiar rocking of Jack or the length of his song, - it con- tained ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscien- tious deliberation to the bitter end, the lullaby generally had the desired effect. At such times the men would lie at full length under the trees, in the soft summer twilight, smoking their pipes and drinking in the melodious utter- ances. An indistinct idea that this was pastoral hap- piness pervaded the camp. "This 'ere kind o' think," said Cockney Simmons, meditatively reclining on his el- bow, " is 'eavingly. It reminded him of Greenwich." On the long summer days The Luck was usually car- ried to the gulch whence the golden stone of Roaring Camp was taken. There, on a blanket spread over pine boughs, he would lie while the men were working in the ditches below. Latterly there was a rude attempt to decorate this bower with flowers and sweet-smelling shrubs, and generally some one would bring him a clus- ter of wild honeysuckles, azalias, or the painted blossoms of Las Mariposas. The men had suddenly awakened to the fact that there were beauty and significance in these trifles which they had so long trodden carelessly beneath their feet. A flake of glittering mica, a frag- ment of variegated quartz, a bright pebble from the bed of the creek, became beautiful to eyes thus cleared and strengthened, and were invariably put aside for Th? 56 LITTLE CLASSICS. Luck. It was wonderful how many treasures the woods and hillsides yielded that "would do for Tommy." Surrounded by playthings such as never a child out of fairy -land had before, it is to be hoped that Tommy was content. He appeared to be securely happy albeit there was an infantine gravity about him contem- plative light in his round, gray eyes that sometimes worried Stumpy. He was always tractable and quiet ; and it is recorded that once, having crept beyond his " corral," a hedge of tessellated pine boughs which surrounded his bed, he dropped over the bank on his head in the soft earth, and remained with his mottled legs in the air in that position for at least five minutes with unflinching gravity. He was extricated without a murmur. I hesitate to record the many other instances of his sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon the statements of prejudiced friends. Some of them were not without a tinge of superstition. "I crept up the bank, just now," said Kentuck one day, in a breathless state of excitement, "and dern my skin if he wasn't talking to a jay-bird as was a-sittin' in his lap. There they was, just as free and sociable as anything you please, a-jawin' at each other just like two cherrybunis." Howbeit, whether creeping over the pine boughs or lying lazily on his back, blinking at the leaves above him, to him the birds sang, the squirrels chattered, and the flowers bloomed. Nature was his nurse and play- fellow. For him she would let slip between the leaves golden shafts of sunlight, that fell just within his grasp ; she would send wandering breezes to visit him with THE LUCK OF EOAEING CAMP. 57 the Balm of bay and resinous gums. To him the tall red-woods nodded familiarly and sleepily, the bumble- bees buzzed, and the rooks cawed a slumberous accom- paniment. Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp. They were "flush times," and the luck was with them. The claims had yielded enormously. The camp was jealous of its privileges, and looked suspiciously on strangers. No encouragement was given to immigration; and to make their seclusion more perfect, the land on either side of the mountain camp they duly pre-empted. This, and a reputation for singular proficiency with the re- volver, kept the reserve of Roaring Camp inviolate. The expressman their only connecting link with the surrounding world sometimes told wonderful stories of the camp. He would say, " They 've a street up there in ' Roaring ' that would lay over any street in Red Dog. They 've got vines and flowers round their houses, and they wash themselves twice a day. But they 're mighty rough on strangers, and they worship an Ingin baby." With the prosperity of the camp came a desire for further improvement. It was proposed to build a hotel the following spring, and to invite one or two decent families to reside there for the sake of The Luck, who might perhaps profit by female companionship. The sacrifice that tin's concession to the sex cost these men, who were fiercely sceptical in regard to its general virtue and usefulness, can only be accounted for by their affection for Tommy. A few still held out. But the resolve could not be carried into effect for three months, and the minority meekly yielded, in the hope 3* 58 LITTLE CLASSICS. that something might turn up to prevent it. And it did. The winter of 1851 will long be remembered in the foot-hills. The snow lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a river, and every river a lake. Each gorge and gulch was transformed into a tumult- uous watercourse that descended the hillsides, tearing down giant trees and scattering its drift and debris along the plain. Red Dog had been twice under water, and Roaring Camp had been forewarned. " Water put the gold into them gulches," said Stumpy. " It 's been here once, and will be here again!" And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its banks, and swept up the triangular valley of the Roaring Camp. In the confusion of rushing water, crashing trees, and crackling timber, and the darkness which seemed to flow with the water and blot out the fair valley, but little could be done to collect the scattered camp. When the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy, nearest the river- bank, was gone. Higher up the gulch they found the body of its unlucky owner ; but the pride, the hope, the joy The Luck of Roaring Camp had disappeared. They were returning with sad hearts, when a shout from the bank recalled them. It was a relief boat from down the river. They had picked up, they said, a man and an infant, nearly ex- hausted, about two miles below. Did anybody know them, and did they belong here? It needed but a glance to show them Kentuck lying there, cruelly crushed and bruised, but still holding The Luck of Roaring Camp in his arms. As they bent over THE LUCK OP ROARING CAMP. 59 the strangely assorted pair, they saw that the child was cold and pulseless. "He is dead/' said one. Kentuck opened his eyes. " Dead ? " he repeated feebly. " Yes, my man, and you are dying too." A smile lit the eyes of the expiring Kentuck. "Dying?" he repeated; "he's a-taking me with him. Tell the boys I've got The Luck with me now." And the strong man, cliii^ ing to the frail babe as a drowning man is said to cling to a straw, drifted away into a shadowy river that flows forever to the unknown sea. JERRY JARVIS'S WIG. A LEGEND OF THE WEALD OF KENT. BY RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM. 10E," said old Jarvis, looking out of his window, | it was his ground-floor back, " Joe, you seem to be very hot, Joe, and you have got no wig ! " "Yes, sir," quoth Joseph, pausing and resting upon his spade, "it's as hot a day as ever I see; but the celery must be got in, or there '11 be no autumn crop, and " "Well, but, Joe, the sun's so hot, and it shines so on your bald head, it makes one wink to look at it. You '11 have a coup de soleil, Joe." " A what, sir ? " " No matter ; it 's very hot working ; and if you '11 step in-doors I '11 give you " " Thank ye, your Honor, a drop of beer will be very acceptable." Joe's countenance brightened amazingly. " Joe, I '11 give you my old wig ! " 61 The countenance of Joseph fell, his gray eye had glistened as a blest vision of double-X flitted athwart his fancy; its glance faded again into the old, filmy, goose- berry-colored hue, as he growled in a minor key, " A wig, sir ! " " Yes, Joe, a wig. The man who does not study the comfort of his dependants is an unfeeling scoundrel. You shall have my old worn-out wig." " I hope, sir, you '11 give me a drop o' beer to drink your Honor's health in; it is very hot, and "Come in, Joe, and Mrs. Witherspoon shall give it you." " Heaven bless your Honor," said honest Joe, striking his spade perpendicularly into the earth, and walking with more than usual alacrity towards the close-cut, quickset hedge which separated Mr. Jarvis's garden from the high-road. From the quickset hedge aforesaid he now raised, with all due delicacy, a well-worn and somewhat dilapidated jacket, of a stuff by drapers most pseudonymously termed " everlasting." Alack ! alack ! what is there to which tempus edax rerum will accord that epithet ? In its high and palmy days it had been all of a piece ; but as its master's eyes now fell upon it, the expression of his countenance seemed to say with Octavian, " Those days are gone, Floranthe ! " It was now, from frequent patching, a coat not unlike that of the patriarch, one of many colors. Joseph Washford inserted his wrists into the corre- sponding orifices of the tattered garment, and with a 62 LITTLE CLASSICS. steadiness of circumgyration, to be acquired only "by long and sufficient practice, swung it horizontally over his ears, and settled himself into it. "Confound your old jacket," cried a voice from the other side the hedge, "keep it down, you rascal! Don't you see my horse is frightened at it ? " " Sensible beast ! " apostrophized Joseph ; " I 've been frightened at it myself every day for the last two years." The gardener cast a rueful glance at its sleeve, and pursued his way to the door of the back kitchen. " Joe," said Mrs. Witherspoon, a fat, comely dame, of about five-and-forty, " Joe, your master is but too good to you ; he is always kind and considerate. Joe, he has desired me to give you his old wig." "And the beer, Ma'am Witherspoon?" said Wash- ford, taking the proffered caxon, and looking at it with an expression somewhat short of rapture, " and the beer, ma'am ! " " The beer, you guzzling wretch ! what beer ? Mas- ter said nothing about no beer. You ungrateful fellow, has not he given you a wig ? " " "Why, yes, Madam Witherspoon ! but then, you see, his Honor said it was very hot, and I'm very dry, and " " Go to the pump, sot ! " said Mrs. Witherspoon, as she slammed the back door in the face of the petitioner. Mrs. Witherspoon was " of the Lady Huntingdon per- suasion," and Honorary Assistant Secretary to the Apple- dore branch of the "Ladies' Grand Junction Water- working Temperance Society." Joe remained for a few moments lost in mental ab- JERRY JARVIS^S WIG. 63 straction ; he looked at the door, lie looked at the wig ; his first thought was to throw it into the pigsty, his corruption rose, but he resisted the impulse ; he got the better of Satan ; the half-formed imprecation died before it reached his lips. He looked disdainfully at the wig ; it had once been a comely jasey enough, of the color of over-baked gingerbread, one of the description commonly known during the latter half of the last century by the name of a "brown George." The species, it is to be feared, is now extinct ; but a few, a very few of the same description might, till very lately, be occasionally seen, rari nantes in gurgite vasto, the glorious relics of a bygone day, crowning the cerebellum of some venerated and venerable provost, or judge of assize ; but Mr. Jar- vis's wig had one peculiarity ; unlike most of its fellows, it had a tail ! " cribbed and confined," indeed, by a shabby piece of faded shalloon. Washford looked at it again ; he shook his bald head ; the wig had certainly seen its best days ; still it had about it somewhat of an air of faded gentility; it was " like ancient Rome, majestic in decay " ; and as the small ale was not to be forthcoming, why after all, an old wig was better than nothing ! Mr. Jeremiah Jarvis, of Appledore, in the Weald of Kent, was a gentleman by act of Parliament ; one of that class of gentlemen who, disdaining the bourgeoise-sound- ing name of " attorney-at-law," are, by a legal fiction, de- nominated solicitors. I say by a legal fiction, for surely the general tenor of the intimation received by such as enjoy the advantage of their correspondence has little in common with the idea usually attached to the term 64 LITTLE CLASSICS. "solicitation." "If you don't pay my bill, and costs, I '11 send you to jail," is a very energetic entreaty. There are, it is true, etymologists who derive their style and title from the Latin infinitive solicitare, to "make anxious," in all probability they are right, If this be the true etymology of his title, as it was the main end of his calling, then was Jeremiah Jarvis a worthy exemplar of the genus to which he belonged. Few persons in his time had created greater solicitude among his Majesty's lieges within the " Weald." He was rich, of course. The best house in the country-town is always the lawyer's, and it generally boasts a green door, stone steps, and a brass knocker. In neither of these appen- dages to opulence was Jeremiah deficient ; but then he was so very rich ; his reputed wealth, indeed, passed all the common modes of accounting for its increase. True, he was so universal a favorite that every man whose will he made was sure to leave him a legacy ; that he was a sort of general assignee to all the bankruptcies within twenty miles of Appledore, was clerk to half the "trusts," and treasurer to most of the "rates," " funds," and " subscriptions " in that part of the country ; that he was land-agent to Lord Moimtrluno, and steward to the rich Miss Tabbytale of Srnerrididdle Hall; that he had been guardian (?) to three young profligates who all ran through their property, which, somehow or another, came at last into his hands, " at an equitable valuation." Still his possessions were so considerable as not to be altogether accounted for, in vulgar esteem, even by these and other honorable modes of accumulation; fcor were there wanting those who conscientiously enter- 65 tained a belief that a certain dark-colored gentleman, of indifferent character, known principally by his predilec- tion for appearing in perpetual mourning, had been through life his great friend and counsellor, and had mainly assisted in the acquirement of his revenues. That " old Jerry Jarvis had sold himself to the Devil " was, indeed, a dogma which it were heresy to doubt in Apple- dore ; on this head, at least, there were few schismatics in the parish. When the worthy " Solicitor " next looked out of his ground-floor back, he smiled with much complacency at beholding Joe Washford again hard at work, in his wig, the little tail aforesaid oscillating like a pendulum in the breeze. If it be asked what could induce a gentle- man, whose leading principle seems to have been self- appropriation, to make so magnificent a present, the an- swer is, that Mr. Jarvis might perhaps have thought an occasional act of benevolence necessary or politic ; he is not the only person, who, having stolen a quantity of leather, has given away a pair of shoes, pour V amour de Dieu, perhaps he had other motives. Joe, meanwhile, worked away at the celery-bed; but truth obliges us to say, neither with the same degree of vigor nor perseverance as had marked the earlier efforts of the morning. His pauses were more frequent; he rested longer on the handle of his spade ; while ever and anon his eye would wander from the trench beneath him to an object not unworthy the contemplation of a natural philosopher. This was an apple-tree. Fairer fruit never tempted Eve or any of her daugh- ters ; the bending branches groaned beneath their luxu- 66 LITTLE CLASSICS. riant freight, and, dropping to earth, seemed to ask the protecting aid of man either to support or to relieve them. The fine, rich glow of their sun-streaked clusters derived additional loveliness from the level beams of the descending day-star. An anchorite's month had watered at the pippins. On the precise graft of the espalier of Eden, "San- choniathon, Manetho, and Berosus " are undecided ; the best-informed Talmudists, however, have, if we are to believe Dr. Pinner's German version, pronounced it a Ribstone pippin, and a Bibstone pippin-tree it was that now attracted the optics and discomposed the inner man of the thirsty, patient, but perspiring gardener. The heat was still oppressive ; no beer had moistened his lip, though its very name, uttered as it was in the ungracious tones of a "Witherspoon, had left behind a longing as in- tense as fruitless. His thirst seemed supernatural, when at this moment his left ear experienced "a slight and tickling sensation," such as we are assured is occasion- ally produced by an infinitesimal dose in homoeopathy ; a still, small voice, it was as though a daddy-long-legs were whispering in his tympanum, a still, small voice seemed to say, "Joe! take an apple, Joe." Honest Joseph started at the suggestion; the rich crimson of his jolly nose deepened to a purple tint in the beams of the setting sun ; his very forehead was incarna- dine. He raised his hand to scratch his ear, the little tortuous tail had worked its way into it, he pulled it out by the bit of shalloon, and allayed the itching, then cast his eye wistfully towards the mansion where his master was sitting by the open window. Joe pursed up WIG. 67 his parched lips into an arid whistle, and with a desperate energy struck his spade once more into the celery-bed. Alack ! alack ! what a piece of work is man ! how short his triumphs! how frail his resolutions! Erom this fine and very original moral reflection we turn reluctantly to record the sequel. The celery-bed, alluded to as the main scene of Mr. Washford's opera- tions, was drawn in a rectilinear direction, nearly across the whole breadth of the parallelogram that comprised the "kitchen-garden." Its northern extremity abutted to the hedge before mentioned, its southern one woe is me that it should have been so ! was in fearful vicinity to the Ribstone pippin-tree. One branch, low bowed to earth, seemed ready to discharge its precious burden into the very trench. As Joseph stooped to insert the last plant with his dibble, an apple of more than ordinary beauty bobbed against his knuckles. " He 's taking snuff, Joe," whispered the same small voice; the tail had twisted itself into its old position. " He 's sneezing ! now, Joe ! now ! " And, ere the agitated horticul- turist could recover from his surprise and alarm, the fruit was severed, and in his hand ! " He ! he ! he ! " shrilly laughed, or seemed to laugh, that accursed little pigtail. Washford started at once to the perpendicular. With an enfrenzied grasp he tore the jasey from his head, and, with that in one hand and his ill-acquired spoil in the other, he rushed distractedly from the garden ! All that night was the humble couch of the once-happy gardener haunted with the most fearful visions. He was 68 LITTLE CLASSICS. stealing apples, lie was robbing lien-roosts, lie was altering the chalks upon the milk-score, he had pur- loined three chemises from a hedge, and he awoke in the very act of cutting the throat of one of Squire Hodge's sheep ! A clammy dew stood upon his temples, the cold perspiration burst from every pore, he sprang in terror from the bed. " Why, Joe, what ails thee, man ? " cried the usually incurious Mrs. Washford; "what be the matter with thee ? Thee hast done nothing but grunt and growl all f night long, and now thee dost stare as if thee saw summut. What bees it, Joe?" A long-drawn sigh was her husband's only answer; his eye fell upon the bed. " How the devil came that here ? " quoth Joseph, with a sudden recoil ; " who put that thing on my pillow ? " " Why, I did, Joseph. Th' ould nightcap is in the wash, and thee didst toss and tumble so, and kick the clothes off, I thought thee mightest catch cold, so I clapt t' wig atop o' thee head." And there it lay, the little sinister-looking tail im- pudently perked up, like an infernal gnomon on a Satanic dial-plate, Larceny and Ovicide shone in every hair of it! " The dawn was overcast, the morning lowered, And heavily in clouds brought on the day," when Joseph Washford once more repaired to the scene of his daily labors; a sort of unpleasant consciousness flushed his countenance, and gave him an uneasy feeling as he opened the garden-gate ; for Joe, generally speak- ing, was honest as the skin between his brows ; his hand JERRY JARVIS S WIG 69 faltered as it pressed the latch. "Pooh, pooh! 'twas but an apple, after all ! " said Joseph. He pushed open the wicket, and found himself beneath the tempting tree. But vain now were all its fascinations ; like fairy gold seen by the morning light, its charms had faded into very nothingness. Worlds, to say nothing of apples, which in shape resemble them, would not have bought him to stretch forth an unhallowed hand again; he went steadily to his work. The day continued cloudy ; huge drops of rain feU at intervals, stamping his bald pate with spots as big as halfpence ; but Joseph worked on. As the day advanced, showers fell thick and frequent; the fresh-turned earth was itself fragrant as a bouquet. Joseph worked on; and when at last Jupiter Pluvius descended in all his majesty, soaking the ground into the consistency of dingy pudding, he put on his -party-colored jacket, and strode towards his humble home, rejoicing in his renewed integrity. " 'T was but an apple, after all ! Had it been an apple-pie, indeed ! " An apple-pie ! " the thought was a dangerous one, too dangerous to dweU on. But Joseph's better Genius was this time lord of the ascendant ; he dismissed it, and passed on. On arriving at his cottage, an air of bustle and confu- sion prevailed within, much at variance with the peaceful serenity usually observable in its economy. Mrs. Wash- ford was in high dudgeon; her heels clattered on the red-tiled floor, and she whisked about the house like a parched pea upon a drum-head ; her voice, generally small and low, "an excellent thing in woman," was 70 LITTLE CLASSICS. pitched at least an octave above its ordinary level ; sha was talking fast and furious. Something had evidently gone wrong. The mystery was soon explained. The " cussed old twoad of a cat " had got into the dairy, and licked off the cream from the only pan their single cow had filled that morning ! And there she now lay, purring as in scorn. Tib, heretofore the meekest of mousers, the honestest, the least " scaddle " of the feline race, a cat that one would have sworn might have been trusted with untold fish, yes, there was no denying it, proofs were too strong against her, yet there she lay, hardened in her iniquity, coolly licking her whiskers, and reposing quietly upon what ? Jerry Jarvis's old wig! The patience of a Stoic must have yielded ; it had been too much for the temperament of the Man of Uz. Jo- seph Washford lifted his hand, that hand which had never yet been raised on Tibby save to fondle and caress, it now descended on her devoted head in one tremen- dous "dowse." Never was cat so astonished, so en- raged : all the tiger portion of her nature rose in her soul. Instead of galloping off, hissing and sputtering, with arched back, and tail erected, as any ordinary Grimalkin would unquestionably have done under similar circumstances, she paused a moment, drew back on her haunches, all her energies seemed concentrated for one prodigious spring ; a demoniac fire gleamed in her green and yellow eyeballs, as, bounding upwards, she fixed her talons firmly in each of her assailant's cheeks ! many and many a day after were sadly visible the marks of those envenomed claws, then dashing over his 71 shoulder with an unearthly mew, she leaped through the open casement, and was seen no more. " The Devil 's in the cat ! " was the apostrophe of Mrs. Margaret Washford. Her husband said nothing, but thrust the old wig into his pocket, and went to bathe his scratches at the pump. Day after day, night after night, 't was all the same, Joe Washford's life became a burden to him ; his natural upright and honest mind struggled hard against the frailty of human nature. He was ever restless and un- easy ; his frank, open, manly look, that blenched not from the gaze of the spectator, was no more ; a sly and sinister expression had usurped the place of it. Mr. Jeremiah Jarvis had little of what the world calls "Taste," still less of "Science." Ackerman would have called him a "Snob," and Buckland a "Nincom- poop." Of the Horticultural Society, its fetes, its fruits, and its fiddlings, he knew nothing. Little recked he of flowers, save cauliflowers ; in these, indeed, he was a connoisseur ! to their cultivation and cookery the re- spective talents of Joe and Madam Witherspoon had long been dedicated ; but as for a bouquet ! Hardham's 37 was " the only one fit for a gentleman's nose." And yet, after all, Jerry Jarvis had a good-looking tulip-bed. A female friend of his had married a Dutch merchant ; Jerry drew the settlements ; the lady paid him by a check on " Child's," the gentleman by a present of a " box of roots." Jerry put the latter in his garden, he had rather they had been schalots. Not so his neighbor Jenkinson; he was a man of " Taste " and of " Science " ; he was an F. R C. E. B. S., 72 LITTLE CLASSICS. which, as he told the Vicar, implied " Fellow of the Royal Cathartico-Emetico-Botaiiical Society," and his autograph hi Sir John Frostyface's album stood next to that of the Emperor of all the Russias. Neighbor Jen- kinsou fell in love with the pips and petals of " Neighbor Jarvis's tulips." There were oue or two among them of such brilliant, such surpassing beauty, the " cups " so well formed, the colors so defined. To be sure, Mr. Jenkinson had enough in his own garden; but then, "Enough," says the philosopher, " always means a little more than a man has got." Alas ! alas ! Jerry Jarvis was never known to bestow, his neighbor dared not offer to purchase from so wealthy a man; and, wqrse than all, Joe the gardener was incorruptible, ay, but the wig ? Joseph Washford was working away again in the blaze of the midday sun ; his head looked like a copper sauce- pan fresh from the brazier's. "Why, where 's your wig, Joseph?" said tbe voice of his master from the well-known window ; " what have you done with your wig ? " The question was embar- rassing, its tail had tickled his ear till it had made it sore ; Joseph had put the wig in his pocket. Mr. Jeremiah Jarvis was indignant ; he liked not that his benefits should be ill appreciated by the recipient. " Hark ye, Joseph Washford," said he, " either wear my wig, or let me have it again ! " There was no mistaking the meaning of his tones ; they were resonant of indignation and disgust, of mingled grief and anger, the amalgamation of sentiment naturally produced by JERRY JARVIS'S WIG. 73 " Friendship unreturned, And unrequited love." Washford's heart smote him; he felt all that was im- plied in his master's appeal. " It 's here, your Honor," said he ; "I had only taken it off because we have had a smartish shower ; but the sky is brightening now." The wig was replaced, and the little tortuous pigtail wriggled itself into its accustomed position. At this moment Neighbor Jenkinson peeped over the hedge. " Joe Washford ! " said Neighbor Jenkinson. " Sir to you," was the reply. " How beautiful your tulips look after the rain ! " " Ah ! sir, master sets no great store by them flowers/' returned the gardener. " Indeed ! Then perhaps he would have no objection to part with a few ? " " Why, no ! I don't think master would like to give them or anything else away, sir." And Washford scratched his ear. " Joe ! ! " said Mr. Jenkinson, " Joe ! " The Sublime, observes Longinus, is often embodied in a monosyllable " Joe ! ! ! " Mr. Jenkinson said no more ; but a half-crown shone from between his upraised fingers, and its " poor, poor dumb mouth " spoke for him. How Joseph Washford's left ear did itch ! He looked to the ground-floor back, Mr. Jarvis had left the win- dow. Mr. Jenkinson's ground-plot boasted at daybreak next morning a splendid Semper Augustus, "which was not VOL. IV. 4 74 LITTLE CLASSICS. so before " ; and Joseph Washford was led borne, much about the same time, in a most extraordinary state of " civilation," from " The Three Jolly Potboys." From that hour he was the Fiend's ! ! " Facilis descensus Averni ! " says Virgil. " It is only the first step that is attended with any difficulty," says somebody else when speaking of the decollated martyr, St. Dennis's walk with his head under his arm. " The First Step ! " Joseph Washford had taken that step ! he had taken two three fonr steps ; and now, from a hesitating, creeping, cat-like mode of pro- gression, he had got into a firmer tread an amble a positive trot ! He took the family linen " to the wash " ; one of Madam Witherspoon's best Holland chemises was never seen after. " Lost ! impossible ! How could it be lost ? where could it be gone to ? who could have got it ? It was her best her very best ! she should know it among a hundred among a thousand ! it was marked with a great "W in the corner. Lost? impossible! She would see ! " Alas ! she never did see the chemise abiit, erupit, etasit ! it was " Like the lost Pleiad, seen on earth no more." But Joseph Washford's Sunday shirt was seen, finer and fairer than ever, the pride and dulce decus of the Meeting. The Meeting ? ay, the Meeting. Joe TTashford nev- er missed the Appledore Independent Meeting-House, whether the service were in the morning or afternoon, JERRY JARVIS'S WIG. 75 whether the Rev. Mr. Slyandry exhorted or made way for the Rev. Mr. Tearbrain. Let who would officiate, there was Joe. As I have said before, he never missed ; but other people missed, one missed an umbrella, one a pair of clogs. Farmer Johnson missed his tobacco-box, Farmer Jackson his great-coat ; Miss Jackson missed her hymn-book, a diamond edition, bound in maroon-colored velvet, with gilt corners and clasps. Everything, in short, was missed but Joe Washford; there he sat, grave, sedate, and motionless, all save that restless, troublesome, fidgety little pigtail attached to his wig, which nothing could keep quiet, or prevent from tickling and interfering with Miss Thompson's curls, as she sat back to back with Joe in the adjoining pew. After the third Sunday, Nancy Thompson eloped with the tall re- cruiting sergeant of the Connaught Rangers. The summer passed away, autumn came and went, and Christmas, jolly Christmas, that period of which we are accustomed to utter the mournful truism, it " comes but once a year," was at hand. It was a fine, bracing morning ; the sun was just beginning to throw a brighter tint upon the Quaker-colored ravine of Orlestone Hill, when a medical gentleman, returning to the quiet little village of Ham Street, that lies at its foot, from a farm- house at Kingsnorth, rode briskly down the declivity. After several hours of patient attention, Mr. Money' penny had succeeded in introducing to the notice of seven little expectant brothers and sisters a " remarkably fine child," and was now hurrying home in the sweet hope of a comfortable " snooze " for a couple of hours before the announcement of tea and muffins should arouse him 76 LITTLE CLASSICS. to fresh exertion. The road at this particular spot had, even then, been cut deep below the surface of the soil, for the purpose of diminishing the abruptness of the descent, and, as either side of the superincumbent banks was closed with a thick mantle of tangled copsewood, the passage, even by day, was sufficiently obscure, the level beams of the rising or setting sun, as they happened to enfilade the gorge, alone illuminating its recesses. A long stream of rosy light was just beginning to make its way through the vista, and Mr. Moneypenny's nose had scarcely caught and reflected its kindred ray, when the sturdiest and most active cob that ever rejoiced in the appellation of a " Suffolk Punch " brought herself up in mid career upon her haunches, and that with a sudden- ness which had almost induced her rider to describe that beautiful mathematical figure, the parabola, between her ears. Peggy her name was Peggy stood stock-still, snorting like a stranded grampus, and alike insensible to the gentle hints afforded her by hand and heel. " Teh ! tch ! get along, Peggy ! " half exclaimed, half whistled the equestrian. If ever steed said in its heart, " I '11 be shot if I do ! " it was Peggy at that moment. She planted her forelegs deep in the sandy soil, raised her stump of a tail to an elevation approach- ing the horizontal, protruded her nose like a pointer at a covey, and with expanded nostril continued to snuffle most egregiously. Mr. Geoffrey Gambado, the illustrious " Master of the Horse to the Doge of Venice," tells us, in his far-famed treatise on the Art Equestrian, that the most embarrassing position in which a rider can be placed is, when he wishes JEEEY JAEVIS'S WIG. 77 to go one way, and his horse is determined to go another. There is, to be sure, a tertium quid, which, though it "splits the difference," scarcely obviates the inconven- ience ; this is when the parties compromise the matter by not going any way at all, to this compromise Peggy and her (soi-disani) master were now reduced ; they had fairly joined issue. "Budge!" quoth the doctor. "Budge not ! " quoth the fiend, for nothing short of a fiend could, of a surety, inspire Peggy at such a time with such unwonted obstinacy. Moneypenny whipped and spurred ; Peggy plungad and reared and kicked ; and for several minutes, to a superficial observer, the termination of the contest might have appeared uncertain ; but your profound thinker sees at a glance that, however the scales may appear to vibrate, when the question between the sexes is one of perseverance, it is quite a lost case for the masculine gender. Peggy beat the doctor "all to sticks," and, when he was fairly tired of goading and thumping, maintained her position as firmly as ever. It is of no great use, and not particularly agreeable, to sit still, on a cold frosty morning in January, upon the outside of a brute that will neither go forwards nor backwards ; so Mr. Moneypenny got oft 7 , and muttering curses both "loud" and "deep " between his chattering teeth, " progressed " as near as the utmost extremity of the extended bridle would allow him, to peep among the weeds and brushwood that flanked the road, in order to discover, if possible, what it was that so exclusively attracted the instinctive attention of his Bucephalus. His curiosity was not long at fault; the sunbeam glanced partially upon some object ruddier even than 78 LITTLE CLASSICS. itself, it was a scarlet waistcoat, the wearer of which, overcome perchance by Christmas compotation, seemed to have selected for his " thrice-driven bed of down " the thickest clump of the tallest and most imposing nettles, thereon to doze away the narcotic effects of superabundant juniper. This, at least, was Mr. Moneypenny's belief, or he would scarcely have uttered, at the highest pitch of his contralto, " TVhat are you doing there, you drunken rascal ? frightening my horse ! " We have already hinted, if not absolutely asserted, that Peggy was a mare ; but this was no time for verbal criticism. " Get up, I say, get up, and go home, you scoundrel ! " But the " scoundrel " and " drunken rascal " answered not ; he moved not, nor could the prolonged shouting of the appellant, aided by significant explosions from a double- thonged whip, succeed in eliciting a reply. No motion indicated that the recumbent figure, whose outline alone was visible, was a living and a breathing man ! The clear, shrill tones of a ploughboy's whistle sounded at this moment from the bottom of the hill, where the broad and green expanse of Bomney Marsh stretches away from its foot for many a mile, and now gleamed through the mists of morning, dotted and enamelled with its thousand flocks. In a few minutes his tiny figure was seen " slouching " up the ascent, casting a most dispro- portionate and ogre-like shadow before him. " Come here, Jack," quoth the doctor, " come here, boy ; lay hold of this bridle, and mind that my horse does not run away." Peggy threw up her head, and snorted disdain of the JERRY JARVIS'S WIG. 79 insinuation ; she had not the slightest intention of doing any such thing. Mr. Moneypenny meanwhile, disencumbered of his restive nag, proceeded, by manual application, to arouse the sleeper. Alas ! the Seven of Ephesus might sooner have been awakened from their century of somnolency. His was that " dreamless sleep that knows no waking " ; his cares in this world were over. Vainly did Moneypenny prac- tise his own constant precept, "To be well shaken ! " there lay before him the lifeless body of a MURDERED MAN! The corpse lay stretched upon its back, partially concealed, as we have before said, by the nettles which had sprung up among the stumps of the half-grubbed underwood ; the throat was fearfully lacerated, and the dark, deep, arterial dye of the coagulated blood showed that the carotid had been severed. There was little to denote the existence of any struggle; but as the day brightened, the sandy soil of the road exhibited an impression as of a body that had fallen on its plastic surface, and had been dragged to its present position^ while fresh horseshoe-prints seemed to intimate that either the assassin or his victim had been mounted. The pockets of the deceased were turned out and empty ; a hat and heavy -loaded whip lay at no great distance from the body. " But what have we here ? " quoth Dr. Moneypenny ; "what is it that the poor fellow holds so tightly in his hand ? " That hand had manifestly clutched some article with 80 LITTLE CLASSICS. all the spasmodic energy of a dying grasp. IT WAS AN OLD WIG ! Those who are fortunate enough to have seen a Cinque Port court-house may possibly divine what that useful and most necessary edifice was some eighty years ago. Many of them seem to have undergone little alteration, and are in general of a composite order of architecture, a fanci- ful arrangement of brick and timber, with what Johnson would have styled " interstices, reticulated, and decussated between intersections " of lath and plaster. Its less euphonious designation in the " Weald " is a ' ' noggin." One half the basement story is usually of the more solid material ; the other, open to the street, from which it is separated only by a row of dingy columns, supporting a portion of the superstructure, is paved with tiles, and sometimes does duty as a market-place, while, in its centre, flanking the board staircase that leads to the sessions-house above, stands an ominous-looking machine, of heavy perforated wood, clasped within whose stern embrace "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep" off occasionally the drowsiness produced by convivial excess, in a most undignified position, an inconvenience much increased at times by some mischievous urchin, who, after abstracting the shoes of the helpless detenu, amuses him- self by tickling the soles of his feet. It was in such a place, or rather in the court-room above, that in the year 1761 a hale, robust man, some- what past the middle age, with a very bald pate, save where a continued tuft of coarse, wiry hair, stretching from above each ear, swelled out into a grayish-looking JERRY J^RVIS'S WIG. 81 bush upon the occiput, held up his hand before a grave and enlightened assemblage of Dymchurch jurymen. He stood arraigned for that offence most heinous in the sight of God and man, the deliberate and cold-blooded butchery of an unoffending, unprepared fellow-creature, homici- dium quod nullo vidente )t nullo auscultante, clam perpe- tratur. The victim was one Humphry Bourne, a reputable grazier of Ivychurch, worthy and well-to-do, though, per- chance, a thought too apt to indulge on a market-day, when " a score of ewes " had brought in a reasonable profit. Some such cause had detained him longer than usual at an Ashford cattle-show ; he had left the town late, and alone ; early in the following morning his horse was found standing at his own stable-door, the saddle turned round beneath its belly, and much about the time that the corpse of its unfortunate master was discovered some four miles off, by our friend the pharmacopolist. That poor Bourne had been robbed and murdered there could be no question. Who, then, was the perpetrator of the atrocious deed ? The unwilling hand almost refuses to trace the name of Joseph Washford. Yet so it was. Mr. Jeremiah Jarvis was himself the coroner for that division of the county of Kent known by the name of " The Lath of Scraye." He had not sat two minutes on the body before he recognized his quondam property, and started at beholding in the grasp of the victim, as torn in the death-struggle from the murderer's head, his own OLD WIG ! his own perky little pigtail, tied up with a piece of shabby shalloon, now wriggling 4* r 82 LITTLE CLASSICS. and quivering, as in salutation of its ancient master. The silver buckles of the murdered man \vere found in Joe Washtbrd's shoes, broad pieces were found in Joe Washford's pockets, Joe Washford had himself been found, when the hue-and-cry was up, hid in a corn-rig at no great distance from the scene of slaughter, his pruniug- knife red with the evidence of his crime, " the gray hairs yet stuck to the haft ! " For their humane administration of the kws, the lieges of this portion of the realm have long been celebrated. Here it was that merciful verdict was recorded in the case of the old lady accused of larceny, " We find her Not Guilty, and hope she will never do so any more ! " Here it was that the more experienced culprit, when called upon to plead with the customary, though some- what superfluous inquiry, as to "how he would be tried," substituted for the usual reply " By God and my country," that of, " By your worship and a Dymchurch jury." Here it was but enough ! not even a Dymchurch jury could resist such evidence, even though the gallows (i. e. the expense of erecting one) stared them, as well as the criminal, in the face. The very pigtail alone ! ever at his ear ! a clearer case of suadente Diabolo never was made out. Had there been a doubt, its very conduct in the court-house would have settled the question. The Rev. Joel Ingoldsby, umquhile chaplain to the Romney Bench, has left upon record that when exhibited in evidence, together with the blood-stained knife, its twistings, its caperings, its gleeful evolutions, quite " flabbergasted " the jury, and threw all beholders into a consternation. It was remarked, too, by many in the JERftY JARVIS'S WIG. 83 court, that the Forensic Wig of the Recorder himself was, on that trying occasion, palpably agitated, and that its three depending, learned-looking tails lost curl at once, and slunk beneath the obscurity of the powdered collar, just as the boldest dog recoils from a rabid animal of its own species, however small and insignificant. Why prolong the painful scene ? Joe Washford was tried, Joe Washford was convicted, Joe Washford was hanged ! The fearful black gibbet, on which his body clanked in its chains to the midnight winds, frowns no more upon Orlestone Hill ; it has sunk beneath the encroaching hand of civilization; but there it might be seen late in the last century, an awful warning to all bald-pated gentle- men how they wear, or accept, the old wig of a Special Attorney. " Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes ! " Such gifts, as we have seen, may lead to a " Morbid Delusion, the climax of which is Murder ! " The fate of the Wig itself is somewhat doubtful; nobody seems to have recollected, with any degree of precision, what became of it. Mr. Ingoldsby " had heard " that, when thrown into the fire by the court-keeper, after whizzing, and fizzling, and performing all sorts of super- natural antics and contortions, it at length whirled up the chimney with a bang that was taken for the explosion of one of the Eeversham powder-mills, twenty miles off ; while others insinuate that in the " Great Storm " which took place on the night when Mr. Jeremiah Jarvis went to his " long home," wherever that may happen to be, and the whole of " The Marsh " appeared as one broad 84 LITTLE CLASSICS. sheet of flame, something that looked very like a Fiery Wig perhaps a miniature Comet it had unquestion- ably a tail was seen careering in the blaze, and seeming to "ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm." BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. BY NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. HAVE always been very fond of the society of portrait-painters. Whether it is that the pursuit of a beautiful and liberal art softens their natural qualities, or that, from the habit of con- versing while engrossed with the pencil, they like best that touch-and-go talk which takes care of itself; or, more probably still, whether the freedom with which they are admitted behind the curtains of vanity and affection gives a certain freshness and truth to their views of things around them, certain it is, that, in all countries, their rooms are the most agreeable of haunts, and they themselves the most enjoyable of cronies. I had chanced, in Italy, to make the acquaintance of S , an English artist of considerable cleverness in his profession, but more remarkable for his frank good- breeding and his abundant good-nature. Four years after, I had the pleasure of renewing my intercourse with him in London, where he was nourishing, quite up to his deserving, as a portrait-painter. His rooms were hard by one of the principal thoroughfares, and, from making an occasional visit, I grew to frequenting 86 LITTLE CLASSICS. them daily, often joining him at his early breakfast, and often taking him out with me to drive whenever we chanced to tire of our twilight stroll. While rambling in Hyde Park, one evening, I mentioned, for the twen- tieth time, a singularly ill-assorted couple I had once or twice met at his room, a woman of superb beauty, attended by a very inferior-looking and ill-dressed man. S had, previously, with a smile at my specula- tions, dismissed the subject rather crisply ; but, on this occasion, I went into some surmises as to the probable results of such "pairing and matching," and he either felt called upon to defend the lady, or made my mis- apprehension of her character an excuse for telling me what he knew about her. He began the story in the Park, and ended it over a bottle of wine in the Hay- market, of course, with many interruptions and digres- sions. Let me see if I can tie his broken threads together. " That lady is Mrs. Fortescue Titton, and the gentle- man you so much disparage is, if you please, the encum- brance to ten thousand a year, the money as much at her service as the husband by whom she gets it. Whether he could have won her, had he been ' Bereft and gelded of his patrimony,' I will not assert, especially to one who looks on them as ' Beauty and the Beast ' ; but that she loves him, or, at least, prefers to him no handsomer man, I may say I have been brought to believe, in the way of my pro- fession." " You have painted her, then ? " I asked rather eagerly, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. 87 thinking I might get a sketch of her face to take with me to another country. " No, but I have painted him, and for her, and it is not a case of Titania and Bottom, either. She is quite aware he is a monster; and wanted his picture for a rea- son you would never divine. But I must begin at the beginning. " After you left me in Italy, I was employed, by the Earl of , to copy one or two of his favorite pic- tures in the Vatican, and that brought me rather well acquainted with his son. Lord George was a gay youth, and a very ' look-and-die ' style of fellow ; and, as much from admiration of his beauty as anything else, I asked him to sit to me, on our return to London. I painted him very fantastically in an Albanian cap and Oriental morning-gown and slippers, smoking a nargile ; the room in which he sat, by the way, being a correct por- trait of his own den, a perfect museum of costly lux- ury. It was a pretty gorgeous turnout, in the way of color, and was severely criticised, but still a good deal noticed, for I sent it to the exhibition. "I was one day going into Somerset House, when Lord George hailed me, from his cab. He wished to suggest some alteration in his picture, or to tell me of some criticism upon it, I forget exactly what ; but we went up together. Directly before the portrait, gazing at it with marked abstraction, stood a beautiful woman, quite alone ; and, as she occupied the only point where the light was favorable, we waited a moment, till she should pass on, Lord George, of course, rather disposed to shrink from being recognized as the original. The 88 LITTLE CLASSICS. woman's interest in the picture seemed rather to increase, however; and, what with variations of the posture of her head, and pulling at her glove-fingers, and other female indications of restlessness and enthusiasm, I thought I was doing her no injustice by turning to my companion with a congratulatory smile. " ' It seems a case, by Jove ! ' said Lord George, try- ing to look as if it were a matter of very simple occur- rence ; ' and she 's as fine a creature as I 've seen this season! Eh, old boy? T7e must run her down, and see where she burrows, and there 's nobody with her, by good luck ! ' " A party entered just then, and passed between her and the picture. She looked annoyed, I thought, but started forward, and borrowed a catalogue of a little girl ; and we could see that she turned to the last page, on which the portrait was numbered, with, of course, the name and address of the painter. She made a memo- randum on one of her cards, and left the house. Lord George followed, and I, too, as far as the door, where I saw her get into a very stylishly appointed carriage and drive away, followed closely by the cab of my friend, whom I had declined to accompany. "You wouldn't have given very heavy odds against his chance, would you ? " said S , after a moment's pause. " No, indeed ! " I answered, quite sincerely. "Well, I was at work the next morning, glazing a picture I had just finished, when the servant brought up the card of Mrs. Eortescue Titton. I chanced to be alone, so the lady was shown at once into my paint- BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. 89 ing-room ; and lo ! the incognita of Somerset House. The plot thickens, thought I! She sat down in my 'subject' chair; and, faith! her beauty quite dazzled me ! Her first smile But you have seen her ; so I '11 not bore you with a description. " Mrs. Titton blushed on opening her errand to me ; first, inquiring if I was the painter of 'No. 403,' in the exhibition, and saying some very civil things about the picture. I mentioned that it was a portrait of Lord George (for his name was not in the catalogue), and I thought she blushed still more confusedly ; but that, I think now, was fancy, or at any rate had nothing to do with feeling for his Lordship. It was natural enough for me to be mistaken; for she was very par- ticular in her inquiries as to the costume, furniture, and little belongings of the picture, and asked me, among other things, whether it was a flattered likeness ? this last question very pointedly, too ! " She arose to go. Was I at leisure ? and could I sketch a head for her? and when? " I appointed the next day, expecting, of course, that the subject was the lady herself, and scarcely slept with thinking of it, and starved myself at breakfast to have a clear eye and a hand wide awake. And at ten she came, with her Mr. Fortescue Titton ! I was sorry to see that she had a husband ; for I had indulged myself with a vague presentiment that she was a widow; but I begged him to take a chair, and prepared the platform for my beautiful subject. "'Will you take your seat?' I asked, with all my suavity, when my palette was ready. 90 LITTLE CLASSICS. "'My dear/ said she, turning to her husband, and pointing to the chair, ' Mr. S is ready for you.' "I begged pardon for a moment, crossed over to Verey's, and bolted a beefsteak ! A cup of coffee, and a glass of Curafoa, and a little walk round Hanover Square, and I recovered from the shock a little. It went very hard, I give you my word. "I returned, and took a look, for the first time, at Mr. Titton. You have seen him, and have some idea of what his portrait might be, considered as a pleasure to the artist, what it might promise, I should rather say; for, after all, I ultimately enjoyed working at it, quite aside from the presence of Mrs. Titton. It was the ugliest face in the world, but full of good-nature ; and, as I looked closer into it, I saw, among its coarse features, lines of almost feminine delicacy, and capabili- ties of enthusiasm, of which the man himself was prob- ably unconscious. Then a certain helpless style of dress was a wet blanket to him. Rich from his cradle, I sup- pose his qualities had never been needed on the surface. His wife knew them. " From time to time, as I worked, Mrs. Titton came and looked over my shoulder. With a natural desire to please her, I here and there softened a harsh line, and was going on to natter the likeness, not as successfully as I could wish, however ; for it is much easier to get a faithful likeness than to flatter without destroying it. "'Mr. S ,' said she, laying her hand on my arm, as I thinned away the lumpy rim of his nostril, C I want, first, a literal copy of my husband's features. Suppose, with this idea, you take a fresh canvas.' BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. 91 "Thoroughly mystified by the whole business, I did as she requested, and, in two sittings, made a likeness of Titton which would have given you a face-ache. He shrugged his shoulders at it, and seemed very glad when the bore of sitting was over; but they seemed to under- stand each other very well, or, if not, he reserved his questions till there could be no restraint upon the an- swer. He seemed a capital fellow, and I liked him exceedingly. "I asked if I should frame the picture, and send it home ? No ! I was to do neither. If I would be kind enough not to show it, nor mention it to any one, and come next day and dine with them, en famille, Mrs. Titton would feel very much obliged to me. And this dinner was followed up by breakfasts and lunches and suppers; and for a fortnight I really lived with the Tittons: and pleasanter people to live with, by Jove, you haven't seen in your travels, though you are c a picked man of countries ! ' "I should mention, by the way, that I was always placed opposite Titton at table, and that he was a good deal with me, one way and another, taking me out, as you do, for a stroll, calling and sitting with me when I was at work, etc. And as to Mrs. Titton, if I did not mistrust your arriere-pensee, I would enlarge a little on my intimacy with Mrs. Titton ! But believe me when I tell you that, without a ray of flirtation, we became as cosily intimate as brother and sister." "And what of Lord George, all this time?" I asked. " O, Lord George ! Well, Lord George, of course, 92 LITTLE CLASSICS. had no difficulty in making Mrs. Titton's acquaintance, though they were not quite in the same circle ; and he had been presented to her, and had seen her at a party or two, where he managed to be invited on purpose; but of this, for a while, I heard nothing. She had not yet seen him at her own house, and I had not chanced to encounter him. But let me go on with my story. " Mrs. Titton sent for me to come to her one morning rather early. I found her in her boudoir, in a neglige morning-dress, and looking adorably beautiful, and as pure as beautiful, you smiling villain ! She seemed to have something on her mind, about which she was a little embarrassed ; but I knew her too well to lay any unction to my soul. We chatted about the weather a few moments, and she came to the point. You will see that she was a woman of some talent, mon ami ! " ' Have you looked at my husband's portrait since you finished it ? ' she asked. " ' No, indeed ! ' I replied, rather hastily ; but imme- diately apologized. " ' 0, if I had not been certain you would not,' she said, with a smile, ' I should have requested it, for I wished you to forget it, as far as possible. And now let me tell you what I want of you. You have got, on canvas, a likeness of Fortescue as the world sees him. Since taking it, however, you have seen him more inti- mately, and and like his face better, do you not ? ' " ' Certainly ! certainly ! ' I exclaimed, in all sin- cerity. " ' Thank you ! If I mistake not, then, you do not, when thinking of him, call up to your mind the features BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. 93 in your portrait, but a face formed rather of his good qualities, as you have learned to trace them in his expression.' " * True, 5 I said, ' very true ! ' " ' Now, then,' she continued, leaning over to me very earnestly, ' I want you to paint a new picture, and, with- out departing from the real likeness, which you will have to guide you, breathe into it the expression you have in your ideal likeness. Add to what the world sees what I see, what you see, what all who love him see, in his plain features. Idealize it, spiritualize it, and with- out lessening the resemblance. Can this be done P * " I thought it could. I promised to do my utmost. " ' I shall call and see you as you progress in it,' she said ; ' and now, if you have nothing better to do, stay to lunch, and come out with me in the carriage. I want a little of your foreign taste in the selection of some pretty nothings for a gentleman's toilet.' "We passed the morning in making what I should consider very extravagant purchases for anybody but a prince-royal, winding up with some delicious cabinet pictures, and some gems of statuary, all suited only, I should say, to the apartments of a fastidious luxuriast. I was not yet at the bottom of her secret. " I went to work upon the new picture, with the zeal always given to an artist by an appreciative and confiding employer. She called every day, and made important suggestions, and at last I finished it to her satisfaction and mine ; and, without speaking of it as a work of art, I may give you my opinion that Titton will scarcely be more embellished in the other world, that is, if it be 94 LITTLE CLASSICS. true, as the divines tell us, that our mortal likeness will be so far preserved, though improved upon, that we shall be recognizable by our friends. Still, I was to paint a third picture, a cabinet full length ; and for this the other two were but studies, and so intended by Mrs. Fortescue Titton. It was to be an improvement upon Lord George's portrait (which, of course, had given her the idea), and was to represent her husband in a very costly and an exceedingly recherche morning costume, dressing-gown, slippers, waistcoat, and neckcloth worn with perfect elegance, and representing a Titton with a faultless attitude (in a fauteuil, reading), a faultless ex- terior, and around him the most sumptuous appliances of dressing-room luxury. This picture cost me a great deal of vexation and labor ; for it was emphatically a fancy picture. poor Titton never having appeared in that character, even ' by particular desire.' I finished it, however, and again to her satisfaction. I afterward added some finishing touches to the other two, and sent them home, appropriately framed according to very minute instructions." " How long ago was this ? " I asked. " Three years," replied S , musing over his wine. " Well the sequel ? " said I, a little impatient. " I was thinking how I should let it break upon you, as it took effect upon her acquaintances ; for, understand, Mrs. Titton is too much of a diplomatist to do anything obviously dramatic in this age of ridicule. She knows very well that any sudden ( flare-up' of her husband's consequence, any new light on his character obviously calling for attention, would awaken speculation, and set BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. 95 to work the watchful anatomizers of the body fashion- able. Let me see ! I will tell you what I should have known about it, had I been only an ordinary acquaintance, not in the secret, and not the painter of the pictures. " Some six months after the finishing of the last por- trait, I was at a large ball at their house. Mrs. Titton's beauty, I should have told you, and the style in which they lived, and, very possibly, a little of Lord George's good-will, had elevated them, from the wealthy and respectable level of society, to the fashionable and ex- clusive. All the best people went there. As I was going in, I overtook, at the head of the stairs, a very clever little widow, an acquaintance of mine, and she honored me by taking my arm, and keeping it for a promenade through the rooms. We made our bow to Mrs. Titton, and strolled across the reception-room, where the most conspicuous object, dead facing us, with a flood of light upon it, was my first veracious portrait of Titton ! As I was not known as the artist, I indulged myself in some commonplace exclamations of horror. " ' Do not look at that,' said the widow, ' you will distress poor Mrs. Titton. What a quiz that clever husband of hers must be, to insist on exposing such a caricature ! ' " ' How insist upon it ? ' I asked. " ' Why, have you never seen the one in her boudoir ? Come with me.' " We made our way through the apartments, to the little retreat lined with silk, which was the morning lounge of the fair mistress of the house. There was but one picture, with a curtain drawn carefully across unu ;I_L- :- :;- : ; . . . - .-_ - ... :-, : .:*:* :: -T _; - - : BEAUTY AXD THE BE 97 within himself. That 'a ike reason that atrocious por- trait is hung up in the best room, and tins good looking one covered up with a curtain ! I suppose this would n't be here, if he could have his own way, and if his wife were n't so much in lore with him ! ' "This, I assnre you," said S , "is the impres- sion throughout their circle of acquaintances. Tile Tit- tons themselves maintain a complete l**w< on the subject. Mr. Fortescue Titton is coasideitd a very accomplished man, with a very proud and very secret contempt for the opinions of the world, dressing badly on purpose, silent and simple by design, and only earing to show nimsplf in his real character to his beautiful wife, who is thought to be completely in lore with him, and quite excusable for it ! What do yon think of the woman's diplomatic talents ? " "I think I should like to know her," said I; "but what says Lord George to afl this?" I had a call from Lord George not long ago," re- plied S , "and, for the first time since oar chat at Somerset House, the conversation turned upon the Ettou, '"Devilish sly of you!' said his Lordship, turning to me half angry; 'why did you pretend not to know the woman at Somerset House ? Yon might hare saved me lots of trouble and money, for I was a month or two finding out what sort of people they were, feeing the servants, and getting them called on and invited here and there, aH with the ifo that h was a rich dookey with a fine toy that didn't belong to him!' " ' Well ! ' exclaimed I VOL. ir. 5 a 98 LITTLE CLASSICS. " ' Well! not at all -well ! I made a great ninny of myself, with that satirical slyboots, old Titton, laughing at me all the time, when you, that had painted him in his proper character, and knew what a deep devil he was, might have saved nie with but half a hint ! ' " ' You have been in the lady's boudoir, then ! ' " ' Yes, and in the gentleman's sanctum sanctorum ! Mrs. Titton sent for me about some trumpery thing or other, and when I called, the servant showed me in there by mistake. There was a great row in the house about it, but I was there long enough to see what a monstrous nice time the fellow has of it, all to himself, and to see your picture of him in his private character. The pic- ture you made of me was only a copy of that, you sly traitor ! And I suppose Mrs. Titton did n't like your stealing from hers, did she? for, I take it, that was what ailed her at the exhibition, when you allowed me to be so humbugged ! ' " I had a good laugh ; but it was as much at the quiet success of Mrs. Titton's tactics, as at Lord George's discomfiture. Of course, I could not undeceive him. And now," continued S , very good-naturedly, "just ring for a pen and ink, and I'll write a note to Mrs. Titton, asking leave to bring you there this evening, for it 's her ' night at home,' and she 's worth seeing, if my pictures, which you will see there, are not." DAVID SWAN: A FANTASY. BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. |E can be but partially acquainted even with the events which actually influence our course through life, and our final destiny. There are innumerable other events if such they may be called which come close upon us, yet pass away without actual results, or even betraying their near approach by the reflection of any light or shadow across our minds. Could we know all the vicissitudes of our fortunes, life would be too full of hope and fear, exultation or disap- pointment, to afford us a single hour of true serenity. This idea may be illustrated by a page from the secret history of David Swan. We have nothing to do with David until we find him, at the age of twenty, on the high-road from his native place to the city of Boston, where his uncle, a small dealer in the grocery line, was to take him behind the counter. Be it enough to say, that he was a native of New Hampshire, born of respectable parents, and had received an ordinary school education, with a classic finish by a year at Gilmanton Academy. After journey- ing on foot, from sunrise till nearly noon of a summer's 100 LITTLE CLASSICS. day, his weariness and the increasing heat determined him to sit down in the first convenient shade, and await the coming up of the stage-coach. As if planted on purpose for him, there soon appeared a little tuft of maples, with a delightful recess in the midst, and such a fresh bubbling spring, that it seemed never to have sparkled for any wayfarer but David Swan. Virgin or not, he kissed it with his thirsty lips, and then flung himself along the brink, pillowing his head upon some shirts and a pair of pantaloons, tied up in a striped cotton handkerchief. The sunbeams could not reach him ; the dust did not yet rise from the road, after the heavy rain of yesterday ; and his grassy lair suited the young man better than a bed of down. The spring murmured drowsily beside him ; the branches waved dreamily across the blue sky overhead; and a deep sleep, perchance hiding dreams within its depths, fell upon David Swan. But we are to relate events which he did not dream of. While he lay sound asleep in the shade, other people were wide awake, and passed to and fro, afoot, on horse- back, and in all sorts of vehicles, along the sunny road by his bedchamber. Some looked neither to the right hand nor the left, and knew not that he was there; some merely glanced that way, without admitting the slumberer among their busy thoughts ; some laughed to see how soundly he slept ; and several, whose hearts were brim- ming full of scorn, ejected their venomous superfluity on David Swan. A middle-aged widow, when nobody else was near, thrust her head a Little way into the recess, and vowed that the young fellow looked charming in DAVID SWAN: A F5V]ST\ST. 101' his sleep. A temperance lecturer s^w; hir^, and / poor David into the texture of SkS r/eisag > -s an awfnl instance of dead drunkenness by the roadside. But censure, praise, merriment, scorn, and indifference were all one, or rather all nothing, to David Swan. He had slept only a few moments, when a brown carriage, drawn by a handsome pair of horses, bowled easily along, and was brought to a stand-still nearly in front of David's resting-place. A linchpin had fallen out, and permitted one of the wheels to slide off. The damage was slight, and occasioned merely a momentary alarm to an elderly merchant and his wife, who were returning to Boston in the carriage. While the coachman and a servant were replacing the wheel, the lady and gentleman sheltered themselves beneath the maple-trees, and there espied the bubbling fountain, and David Swan asleep beside it. Impressed with the awe which the humblest sleeper usually sheds around him, the merchant trod as lightly as the gout would allow ; and his spouse took good heed not to rustle her silk gown, lest David should start up all of a sudden. " How soundly he sleeps ! " whispered the old gentle- man. " From what a depth he draws that easy breath ! Such sleep as that, brought on without an opiate, would be worth more to me than half my income ; for it would suppose health and an untroubled mind." " And youth besides," said the lady. " Healthy and quiet age does not sleep thus. Our slumber is no more like his, than our wakefulness." The longer they looked the more did this elderly couple feel interested in the unknown youth, to whom the way- 10,2 i TITLE CLASSICS. .Sick arid the m/ipls sjitude were as a secret chamber, with the rick' gloom ef daii'.a'gk curtains brooding over him. ' Perceiving that a stray sunbeam glimmered down upon his face, the lady contrived to twist a branch aside, so as to intercept it. And having done this little act of kind- ness, she began to feel like a mother to him. " Providence seems to have laid him here," whispered she to her husband, " and to have brought us hither to find him, after our disappointment in our cousin's son. Methinks I can see a likeness to our departed Henry. Shall we waken him ? " " To what purpose ? " said the merchant, hesitating. "We know nothing of the youth's character." " That open countenance ! " replied his wife, in the same hushed voice, yet earnestly. "This innocent sleep ! " While these whispers were passing, the sleeper's heart did not throb, nor his breath become agitated, nor his features betray the least token of interest. Yet Fortune Was bending over him, just ready to let fall a burden of gold. The old merchant had lost his only son, and had no heir to his wealth, except a distant relative, with whose conduct he was dissatisfied. In such cases, people sometimes do stranger things than to act the magician, and awaken a young man to splendor, who fell asleep in poverty. " Shall we not waken him ? " repeated the lady, persuasively. " The coach is ready, sir," said the servant, behind. The old couple started, reddened, and hurried away, mutually wondering that they should ever have dreamed, DAVID SWAN : A FANTASY. 103 of doing anything so very ridiculous. The merchant threw himself back in the carriage, and occupied his mind with the plan of a magnificent asylum for unfortunate men of business. Meanwhile, David Swan enjoyed his nap. The carriage could not have gone above a mile or two, when a pretty young girl came along, with a tripping pace, which showed precisely how her little heart was dancing in her bosom. Perhaps it was this merry kind of motion that caused is there any harm in saying it ? her garter to slip its knot. Conscious that the silken girth if silk it were was relaxing its hold, she turned aside into the shelter of the maple-trees, and there found a young man asleep by the spring ! Blushing as red as any rose, that she should have intruded into a gentleman's bedchamber, and for such a purpose, too, she was about to make her escape on tiptoe. But there was peril near the sleeper. A monster of a bee had been wandering overhead, buzz, buzz, buzz, now among the leaves, now flashing through the strips of sunshine, and now lost in the dark shade, till finally he appeared to be settling on the eyelid of David Swan. The sting of a bee is sometimes deadly. As free-hearted as she was innocent, the girl attacked the intruder with her handkerchief, brushed him soundly, and drove him from beneath the maple shade. How sweet a picture ! This good deed accomplished, with quickened breath and a deeper blush, she stole a glance at the youthful stranger for whom she had been battling with a dragon in the air. " He is handsome ! " thought she, and blushed redder yet. 104 LITTLE CLASSICS. How could it be that no dream of bliss grew so strong within him, that, shattered by its very strength, it should part asunder, and. allow him to perceive the girl among its phantoms ? Why, at least, did no smile of welcome brighten upon his face ? She was come, the maid whose soul, according to the old and beautiful idea, had been severed from his own, and whom, in all his vague but passionate desires, he yearned to meet.' Her, only, could he love with a perfect love, him, only, could she receive into the depths of her heart, and now her image was faintly blushing in the fountain by his side; should it pass away, its happy lustre would never gleam upon his life again. " How sound he sleeps ! " murmured the girl. She departed, but did not trip along the road so lightly as when she came. Now, this girl's father was a thriving country mer- chant in the neighborhood, and happened, at that iden- tical time, to be looking out for just such a young man as David Swan. Had David formed a wayside acquaint- ance with the daughter, he would have become the father's clerk, and all else in natural succession. So here again had good fortune the best of fortunes stolen so near that her garments brushed against him; and he knew nothing of the matter. The girl was hardly out of sight, when two men turned aside beneath the maple shade. Both had dark faces, set off by cloth caps, which were drawn down aslant over their brows. Their dresses were shabby, yet had a certain smartness. These were a couple of rascals, who got their living by whatever the Devil sent them, DAVID SWAN: A FANTASY. 105 and now, in the interim of other business, had staked the joint profits of their next piece of villany on a game of cards, which was to have been decided here under the trees. But, finding David asleep by the spring, one of the rogues whispered to his fellow, " Hist ! Do you see that bundle under his head ? " The other villain nodded, winked, and leered. "I '11 bet you a horn of brandy," said the first, "that the chap has either a pocket-book, or a snug little hoard of small change, stowed away amongst his shirts. And if not there, we shall find it in his pantaloons-pocket." " But how if he wakes ? " said the other. His companion thrust aside his waistcoat, pointed to the handle of a dirk, and nodded. " So be it ! " muttered the second villain. They approached the unconscious David, and, while one pointed the dagger toward his heart, the other began to search the bundle beneath his head. Their two faces, grim, wrinkled, and ghastly with guilt and fear, bent over their victim, looking horrible enough to be mistaken for fiends, should he suddenly awake. Nay, had the villains glanced aside into the spring, even they would hardly have known themselves, as reflected there. But David Swan had never worn a more tranquil aspect, even when asleep on his mother's breast. " I must take away the bundle," whispered one. " If he stirs, I '11 strike," muttered the other. But at this moment a dog, scenting along the ground, came in beneath the maple-trees, and gazed alternately at each of these wicked men, and then at the quiet sleeper. He then lapped out of the fountain. 5 * 106 LITTLE CLASSICS. " Pshaw ! " said one villain. " We can do nothing now. The dog's master must be close behind." "Let 's take a drink and be off," said the other. The man with the dagger thrust back the weapon into his bosom, and drew forth a pocket-pistol, but not of that kind which kills by a single discharge. It was a flask of liquor., with a block-tin tumbler screwed upon the mouth. Each drank a comfortable dram, and left the spot, with so many jests, and such laughter at their unaccomplished wickedness, that they might be said to have gone on their way rejoicing. In a few hours they had forgotten the whole affair, nor once imagined that the recording angel had written down the crime of mur- der against their souls, in letters as durable as eternity. As for David Swan, he still slept quietly, neither con- scious of the shadow of death when it hung over him, nor of the glow of renewed life, when that shadow was withdrawn. He slept, but no longer so quietly as at first. An hour's repose had snatched from his elastic frame the weariness with which many hours of toil had burdened it. Now he stirre-I ; now moved his lips, without a sound ; now talked, in an inward tone, to the noonday spectres of his dream. But a noise of wheels came rattling louder and louder along the road, until it dashed through the dispersing mist of David's slumber; and there was the stage-coach. He started up, with all his ideas about him. " Halloo, driver ! Take a passenger ? " shouted he. " Room on top ! " answered the driver. Up mounted David, and bowled away merrily toward Boston, without so much as a parting glance at that DAVID SWAN : A FANTASY. 107 fountain of dreamlike vicissitude. He knew not that a phantom of Wealth had thrown a golden hue upon its waters, nor that one of Love had sighed softly to their murmur, nor that one of Death had threatened to crimson them with his blood ; all, in the brief hour since he lay down to sleep. Sleeping or waking, we hear not the airy footsteps of the strange things that almost hap- pen. Does it not argue a superintending Providence that, while viewless and unexpected events thrust them- selves continually athwart our path, there should still be regularity enough, in mortal life, to render foresight even partially available? DREAMTHORP. BY ALEXANDER SMITH. 1 matters not to relate how or when I became a denizen of Dreamthorp ; it will be sufficient ISBUI to say that I am not a born native, but that I came to reside in it a good while ago now. The several towns and villages in wliich, in my time, I have pitched a tent did not please, for one obscure reason or another : this one was too large, t' other too small ; but when, on a summer evening about the hour of eight, I first beheld Dreamthorp, with its westward-looking windows painted by sunset, its children playing in the single straggling street, the mothers knitting at the open doors, the fathers standing about in long white blouses, chatting or smok- ing ; the great tower of the ruined castle rising high into the rosy air, with a whole troop of swallows, by dis- tance made as small as gnats, skimming about its rents and fissures ; when I first beheld all this, I felt instinc- tively that my knapsack might be taken off my shoulders, that my tired feet might wander no more, that at last, on the planet, I had found a home. From that evening I have dwelt here, and the only journey I am like now to make is the very inconsiderable one, so far at least DEEAMTHORP. 109 as distance is concerned, from the house in which I live to the graveyard beside the ruined castle. There, with the former inhabitants of the place, I trust to sleep quietly enough, and Nature will draw over our heads her coverlet of green sod, and tenderly tuck us in, as a mother her sleeping ones, so that no sound from the world shall ever reach us, and no sorrow trouble us any more. The village stands far inland; and the streams that rot through the soft green valleys all about have as little knowledge of the sea, as the three years' child of the storms and passions of manhood. The surrounding country is smooth and green, full of undulations; and pleasant country roads strike through it in every direc- tion, bound for distant towns and villages, yet in no hurry to reach them. On these roads the lark in sum- mer is continually heard ; nests are plentiful in the hedges and dry ditches ; and on the grassy banks, and at the feet of the bowed dikes, the blue-eyed speedwell smiles its benison on the passing wayfarer. On these roads you may walk for a year and encounter nothing more remarkable than the country cart, troops of tawny children from the woods, laden with primroses, and at long intervals for people in this district live to a ripe age a black funeral creeping in from some remote hamlet ; and to this last the people reverently doff their hats and stand aside. Death does not walk about here often, but when he does, he receives as much respect as the squire himself. Everything round one is unhur- ried, quiet, moss-grown, and orderly. Season follows in the track of season, and one year can hardly be distin- 110 LITTLE CLASSICS. guished from another. Time should be measured here by the silent dial, rather than by the ticking clock, or by the chimes of the church. Dreamthorp can boast of a respectable antiquity, and in it the trade of the builder is unknown. Ever since I remember, not a single stone has been laid on the top of another. The castle, inhabited now by jackdaws and starlings, is old ; the chapel which adjoins it is older still; and the lake behind both, and in which their shadows sleep, is, I sup- pose, as old as Adam. A fountain in the market-place, all mouths and faces and curious arabesques, as dry, however, as the castle moat, has a tradition connected with it ; and a great noble, riding through the street one day several hundred years ago, was shot from a window by a man whom he had injured. The death of this noble is the chief link which connects the place with authentic history. The houses are old, and remote dates may yet be deciphered on the stones above the doors ; the apple- trees are mossed and ancient ; countless generations of sparrows have bred in the thatched roofs, and thereon have chirped out their lives. In every room of the place men have been born, men have died. On Dreamthorp centuries have fallen, and have left no more trace than have last winter's snow-flakes. This commonplace se- quence and flowing on of life is immeasurably affecting. That winter morning when Charles lost his head in front of the banqueting-hall of his own palace, the icicles hung from the eaves of the houses here, and the clown kicked the snowballs from his clouted shoon, and thought but of his supper, when, at three o'clock, the red sun set in the purple mist. On that Sunday in June while Waterloo DREAMTHORP. Ill was going on, the gossips, after morning service, stood on the country roads discussing agricultural prospects, without the slightest suspicion that the day passing over their heads would be a famous one in the calendar. Battles have been fought, kings have died, history has transacted itself; but, all unheeding and untouched, Dreamthorp has watched apple-trees redden, and wheat ripen, and smoked its pipe, and quaffed its mug of beer, and rejoiced over its new-born children, and with proper solemnity carried its dead to the churchyard. As I gaze on the village of my adoption, I think of many things very far removed, and seem to get closer to them. The kst setting sun that Shakespeare saw reddened the win- dows here, and struck warmly on the faces of the hinds coming home from the fields. The mighty storm that raged while Cromwell lay a-dying made all the oak-woods groan round about here, and tore the thatch from the very roofs I gaze upon. When I think of this, I can almost, so to speak, lay my hand on Shakespeare and on Cromwell. These poor walls were contemporaries of both, and I find something affecting in the thought. The mere soil is, of course, far older than either, but it does not touch one in the same way. A wall is the creation of a human hand, the soil is not. This place suits my whim, and I like it better year after year. As with everything else, since I began to love it I find it gradually growing beautiful. Dream- thorp a castle, a chapel, a lake, a straggling strip of gray houses, with a blue film of smoke over all lies embosomed in emerald. Summer, with its daisies, runs up to every cottage door. From the little height where LITTLE CLASSICS. I am now sitting, I see it beneath me. Nothing could be more peaceful. The wind and the birds fly over it. A passing sunbeam makes brilliant a white gable-end, and brings out the colors of the blossomed apple-tree beyond, and disappears. I see figures in the street, but hear them not. The hands on the church clock seem always pointing to one hour. Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine. I make a frame of my fingers, and look at my picture. On the walls of the next Acade- my's Exhibition will hang nothing half so beautiful ! My village is, I think, a special favorite of Summer. Every window-sill in it she touches with color and fra- grance ; everywhere she wakens the drowsy murmurs of the hives ; every place she scents with apple-blossom. Traces of her hand are to be seen on the weir beside" the ruined mill ; and even the canal, along which the barges come and go, has a great white water-lily asleep on its olive-colored face. Never was velvet on a monarch's robe so gorgeous as the green mosses that be-ruff the roofs of farm and cottage, M'hen the sunbeam slants on them and goes. The old road out towards the common, and the hoary dikes that might have been built in the reign of Alfred, have not been forgotten by the generous adorning season ; for every fissure has its mossy cushion, and the old blocks themselves are washed by the loveliest gray-green lichens in the world, and the large loose stones lyiiig on the ground have gathered to themselves the peacefulest mossy coverings. Some of these have not been disturbed for a century. Summer has adorned my village as gayly, and taken as much pleasure in the task, as the people of old, when Elizabeth was queen, DREAMTHORP. 113 took in the adornment of the May -pole against a summer festival. And, just think, not only Dreamtliorp, but every English village she has made beautiful after one fashion or another, making vivid green the hill-slope on which straggling white Welsh hamlets hang right op- posite the sea ; drowning in apple-blossom the red Sus- sex ones in the fat valley. And think, once more, every spear of grass in England she has touched with a livelier green ; the crest of every bird she has burnished ; every old wall between the four seas has received her mossy and licheny attentions ; every nook in every forest she has sown with pale flowers, every marsh she has dashed with the fires of the marigold. And in the wonderful night the moon knows, she hangs the planet on which so many millions of us fight, and sin, and agonize, and die a sphere of glow-worm light. Having discoursed so long about Dreamthorp, it is but fair that I should now introduce you to her lions. These are, for the most part, of a commonplace kind; and I am afraid that, if you wish to find romance in them, you must bring it with you. I might speak of the old church-tower, or of the churchyard beneath it, in which the village holds its dead, each resting-place marked by a simple stone, on which is inscribed the name and age of the sleeper, and a Scripture text be- neath, in which live our hopes of immortality. But, on the whole, perhaps it will be better to begin with the canal, which wears on its olive-colored face the big white water-lily already chronicled. Such a secluded place is Dreamthorp that the railway does not come near, and the canal is the only thing that connects it with the H 114 LITTLE CLASSICS. world. It stands high, and from it the undulating coun- try may be seen stretching away into the gray of dis- tance, -with lulls and woods, and stains of smoke which mark the sites of villages. Every now and then a horse comes staggering along the towing-path, trailing a sleepy barge filled with merchandise. A quiet, indolent life these bargemen lead in the summer days. One lies stretched at his length on the sun-heated plank ; his comrade sits smoking in the little dog-hutch, which I suppose he calls a cabin. Silently they come and go; silently the wooden bridge lifts to let them through. The horse stops at the bridge-house for a drink, and there I like to talk a little with the men. They serve in- stead of a newspaper, and retail with great willingness the news they have picked up in their progress from town to town. I am told they sometimes marvel who the old gentleman is who accosts them from beneath a huge umbrella in the sun, and that they think him either verv wise or very foolish. Not in the least unnatural! We are great friends, I believe, evidence of which they occasionally exhibit by requesting me to disburse a trifle for drink -money. This canal is a great haunt of mine of an evening. The water hardly invites one to bathe in it, and a delicate stomach might suspect the flavor of the eels caught therein ; yet, to my thinking, it is not in the least destitute of beauty. A barge trailing up through it in the sunset is a pretty sight; and the heavenly crimsons and purples sleep quite lovingly upon its glossy ripples. Nor does the evening star disdain it, for as I walk along I see it mirrored therein as clearly as in the waters of the Mediterranean itself. DEEAMTHOEP. 115 The old castle and chapel already alluded to are, per- haps, to a stranger, the points of attraction in Dream- thorp. Back from the houses is the lake, on the green sloping hanks of which, with broken windows and tombs, the ruins stand. As it is noon, and the weather is warm, let us go and sit on a turret. Here, on these very steps, as old ballads tell, a queen sat once, day after day, look- ing southward for the light of returning spears. I be- think me that yesterday, no further gone, I went to visit a consumptive shoemaker; seated here I can single out his very house, nay, the very window of the room in which he is lying. On that straw roof might the raven alight, and flap his sable wings. There, at this moment, is the supreme tragedy being enacted. A woman is weeping there, and little children are looking on with a sore bewilderment. Before nightfall the poor peaked face of the bowed artisan will have gathered its ineffable peace, and the widow will be led away from the bedside by the tenderness of neighbors, and the cries of the or- phan brood will be stilled. And yet this present indubi- table suffering and loss does not touch me like the sor- row of the woman of the ballad, the phantom probably of a minstrel's brain. The shoemaker will be forgotten, - I shall be forgotten ; and long after visitors will sit here and look out on the landscape and murmur the simple lines. But why do death and dying obtrude themselves at the present moment? On the turret opposite, about the distance of a gun-shot, is as pretty a sight as eye could wish to see. Two young people, strangers appar- ently, have come to visit the ruin. Neither the ballad queen, nor the shoemaker down yonder, whose respira- 116 LITTLE CLASSICS. tions are getting shorter and shorter, touches them in the least. They are merry and happy, and the graybeard turret has not the heart to thrust a foolish moral upon them. They would not thank him if he did, I dare say. Perhaps they could not understand him. Time enough ! Twenty years hence they will be able to sit down at his feet, and count griefs with him, and tell him tale for tale. Human hearts get ruinous in so much less time than stone walls and towers. See, the young man has thrown himself down at the girl's feet on a little space of grass. In her scarlet cloak she looks like a blossom springing out of a crevice on the ruined steps. He gives her a flower, and she bows her face down over it almost to her knees. What did the flower say ? Is it to hide a blush ? He looks delighted ; and I almost fancy I see a proud color on his brow. As I gaze, these young people make for me a perfect idyl. The generous, ungrudging sun, the melancholy ruin, decked, like mad Lear, with the flowers and ivies of forgetfulness and grief, and between them, sweet and evanescent, human truth and love ! Love ! does it yet walk the world, or is it impris- oned in poems and romances ? Has not the circulating library become the sole home of the passion ? Is love not become the exclusive property of novelists and play- wrights, to be used by them only for professional pur- poses ? Surely, if the men I see are lovers, or ever have been lovers, they would be nobler than they are. The knowledge that he is beloved should, must make a man tender, gentle, upright, pure. While yet a youngster in a jacket, I can remember falling desperately in love with a young lady several years my senior, after the DEEAMTHORP. 117 fashion of youngsters in jackets. Could I have fibbed in these days? Could I have betrayed a comrade? Could I have stolen eggs or callow young from the nest ? Could I have stood quietly by and seen the weak or the maimed bullied ? Nay, verily ! In these absurd days she lighted up the whole world for me. To sit in the same room with her was like the happiness of perpetual holiday ; when she asked me to run a message for her, or to do any, the slightest, service for her, I felt as if a patent of nobility were conferred on me. I kept my passion to myself, like a cake, and nibbled it in private. Juliet was several years my senior, and had a lover, was, in point of fact, actually engaged ; and, in looking back, I can remember, I was too much in love to feel the slightest twinge of jealousy. I remember also seeing Romeo for the first time, and thinking him a greater man than Caesar or Napoleon. The worth I credited him with, the cleverness, the goodness, the everything ! He awed me by his manner and bearing. He accepted that girl's love coolly and as a matter of course ; it put him no more about than a crown and sceptre puts about a king. What I would have given my life to possess, being only fourteen, it was not much to part with, after all, he wore lightly, as he wore his gloves or his cane. It did not seem a bit too good for him. His self-possession appalled me. If I had seen him take the sun out of the sky, and put it into his breeches-pocket, I don't think I should have been in the least degree surprised. Well, years after, when I had discarded my passion with my jacket, I have assisted this middle-aged Romeo home from a roystering wine-party, and heard him hiccup out 118 LITTLE CLASSICS. his marital annoyances, "with the strangest remembrances of old times, and the strangest deductions therefrom. Did that man with the idiotic laugh and the blurred utterance ever love ? Was he ever capable of loving ? I protest I have my doubts. But where are my young people ? Gone ! So it is always. We begin to moralize and look wise, and Beauty, who is something of a co- quette, and of an exacting turn of mind, and likes atten- tions, gets disgusted with our wisdom or our stupidity, and goes off in a huff. Let the baggage go ! The ruined chapel adjoins the ruined castle on which I am now sitting, and is evidently a building of much older date. It is a mere shell now. It is quite roofless, ivy covers it in part ; the stone tracery of the great western window is yet intact, but the colored glass is gone, with the splendid vestments of the abbot, the fuming incense, the chanting choirs, and the patient, sad-eyed monks, who muttered Aves, shrived guilt, and illuminated missals. Time was when this place breathed actual benedictions, and was a home of active peace. At present it is visited only by the stranger, and delights but the antiquary. The village people have so little respect for it, that they do not even consider it haunted. There are several tombs in the interior bearing knights' escutcheons, which time has sadly defaced. The dust you stand upon is noble. Earls have been brought here in dinted mail from battle, and earls' wives from the pangs of child- bearing. The last trumpet will break the slumber of a right honorable company. One of the tombs the most perfect of all in want of preservation I look at often, and try to conjecture what it commemorates DEEAMTHORP. 119 With all my fancies, I can get no further than the old story of love and death. There, on the slab, the white figures sleep ; marble hands, folded in prayer, on marble breasts. And I like to think that he was brave, she beautiful ; that although the monument is worn by time, and sullied by the stains of the weather, the qualities which it commemorates husbandly and wifely affec- tion, courtesy, courage, knightly scorn of wrong and falsehood, meekness, penitence, charity are existing yet somewhere, recognizable by each other. The man who in this world can keep the whiteness of his soul is not likely to lose it in any other. In summer I spend a good deal of time floating about the lake. The landing-place to which my boat is teth- ered is ruinous, like the chapel and palace, and my em- barkation causes quite a stir in the sleepy little village. Small boys leave their games and mud-pies, and gather round in silence ; they have seen me get off a hundred times, but their interest in the matter seems always new. Not unfrequently an idle cobbler, in red nightcap and leathern apron, leans on a broken stile, and honors my proceedings with his attention. I shoot off, and the hu- man knot dissolves. The lake contains three islands, each with a solitary tree, and on these islands the swans breed. I feed the birds daily with bits of bread. See, one comes gliding towards me, with superbly arched neck, to receive its customary alms ! How wildly beautiful its motions ! How haughtily it begs ! The green pasture lands run down to the edge of the water, and into it in the afternoons the red kine wade and stand knee- deep in their shadows, surrounded by troops of flies. 120 LITTLE CLASSICS. Patiently the honest creatures abide the attacks of their tormentors. Now one swishes itself with its tail, now its neighbor flaps a huge ear. I draw my oars alongside, and let my boat float at its own will. The soft blue heavenly abysses, the wandering streams of vapor, the long beaches of rippled cloud, are glassed and repeated in the lake. Dreamthorp is silent as a picture, the voices of the children are mute ; and the smoke from the houses, the blue pillars all sloping in one angle, float upward as if in sleep. Grave and stern the old castle rises from its emerald banks, which long ago came down to the lake in ten-ace on terrace, gay with fruits and flow- ers, and with stone nymph and satyrs hid in every nook. Silent and empty enough to-day ! A flock of daws sud- denly bursts out from a turret, and round and round they wheel, as if in panic. Has some great scandal exploded ? Has a conspiracy been discovered ? Has a revolution broken out ? The excitement has subsided, and one of them, perched on the old banner-staff, chatters confiden- tially to himself as he, sidewise, eyes the world beneath him. Floating about thus, time passes swiftly, for, be- fore I know where I am, the kine have withdrawn from the lake to couch on the herbage, while one on a little height is lowing for the milkmaid and her pails. Along the road I see the laborers coming home for supper, while the sun setting behind me makes the village win- dows blaze ; and so I take out my oars, and pull leisurely through waters faintly flushed with evening colors. I do not think that Mr. Buckle could have written his "History of Civilization" in Dreamthorp, because in it books, conversation, and the other appurtenances of DREAMTHORP. 121 intellectual life, are not to be procured. I am acquainted with birds, and the building of nests, with wild-flowers, and the seasons in which they blow, but with the big world far away, with what men and women are thinking, and doing, and saying, I am acquainted only through the Times, and the occasional magazine or review, sent by friends whom I have not looked upon for years, but by whom, it seems, I am not yet forgotten. The village has but few intellectual wants, and the intellectual sup- ply is strictly measured by the demand. Still there ia something. Down in the village, and opposite the curi- ously carved fountain, is a school-room which can accom- modate a couple of hundred people on a pinch. There are our public meetings held. Musical entertainments have been given there by a single performer. In that school-room last winter an American biologist terrified the villagers, and, to their simple understandings, mingled up the next world with this. Now and again some rare bird of an itinerant lecturer covers dead walls with post- ers, yellow and blue, and to that school-room we flock to hear him. His rounded periods the eloquent gentleman devolves amidst a respectful silence. His audience do not understand him, but they see that the clergyman does, and the doctor does ; and so they are content, and look as attentive and wise as possible. Then, in connec- tion with the school-room, there is a public library, where books are exchanged once a month. This library is a kind of Greenwich Hospital for disabled novels and ro- mances. Each of these books has been in the wars ; some are unquestionable antiques. The tears of three generations have fallen upon their dusky pages. The VOL. IV 6 122 LITTLE CLASSICS. heroes and the heroines are of another age than ours. Sir Charles Grandison is standing with his hat under his arm. Tom Jones plops from the tree into the water, to the infinite distress of Sophia. Moses comes home from market with his stock of shagreen spectacles. Lov- ers, warriors, and villains as dead to the present gen- eration of readers as Cambyses are weeping, fight- ing, and intriguing. These books, tattered and torn as they are, are read with delight to-day. The viands are celestial, if set forth on a dingy table-cloth. The gaps and chasms which occur in pathetic or perilous chapters are felt to be personal calamities. It is with a certain feeling of tenderness that I look upon these books : I think of the dead fingers that have turned over the leaves, of the dead eyes that have travelled along the lines. An old novel has a history of its own. When fresh and new, and before it had breathed its secret, it lay on my lady's table. She killed the weary day with it, and when night came it was placed beneath her pil- low. At the seaside a couple of foolish heads have bent over it, hands have touched and tingled, and it has heard vows and protestations as passionate as any its pages contained. Coming down in the world, Cinderella in the kitchen has blubbered over it by the light of a sur- reptitious caudle, conceiving herself the while the mag- nificent Georgiana, and Lord Mordaunt, Georgiana's lover, the pot-boy round the corner. Tied up with many a dingy brother, the auctioneer knocks the bundle down to the bidder of a few pence, and it finds its way to the quiet cove of some village library, where with some diffi- culty as if from want of teeth and with numerous DEEAMTHOEP. 123 interruptions as if from lack of memory it tells its old stories, and wakes tears and blushes and laughter as of yore. Thus it spends its age, and in a few years it will become unintelligible, and then, in the dust-bin, like poor human mortals in the grave, it will rest from all its labors. It is impossible to estimate the benefit which such books have conferred. How often have they loosed the chain of circumstance ! What unfamiliar tears, what unfamiliar laughter, they have caused ! What chivalry and tenderness they have infused into rustic loves ! Of what weary hours they have cheated and beguiled their readers ! The big, solemn history- books are in excellent preservation ; the story-books are defaced and frayed, and their out-of-elbows condition is their pride and the best justification of their existence. They are tashed, as roses are, by being eagerly handled and smelt. I observe, too, that the most ancient ro- mances are not in every case the most severely worn. It is the pace that tells in horses, men, and books. There are Nestors wonderfully hale ; there are juveniles in a state of dilapidation. One of the youngest books, " The Old Curiosity Shop," is absolutely falling to pieces. That book, like Italy, is possessor of the fatal gift ; but happily, in its case, everything can be rectified by a new edition. We have buried warriors and poets, princes and queens, but no one of these was followed to the grave by sincerer mourners than was little Nell. Besides the itinerant lecturer, and the permanent library, we have the Sunday sermon. These sum up the intellectual aids and furtherances of the whole place. We have a church and a chapel, and I attend both. 124 LITTLE CLASSICS. The Dreamthorp people are Dissenters, for the most part; why, I never could understand; because dissent implies a certain intellectual effort. But Dissenters they are, and Dissenters they are likely to remain. In an un- gainly building, filled with hard, gaunt pews, without an organ, without a touch of color in the windows, with nothing to stir the imagination or the devotional sense, the simple people worship. On Sunday they are put upon a diet of spiritual bread-and-water. Personally, I should desire more generous food. But the laboring people listen attentively, till once they fall asleep, and they wake up to receive the benediction with a feeling of having done their duty. They know they ought to go to chapel, and they go. I go likewise, from habit, although I have long ago lost the power of following a discourse. In my pew, and whilst the clergyman is going on, I think of the strangest things, of the tree at the win- dow, of the congregation of the dead outside, of the wheat-fields and the corn-fields beyond and all around. And the odd thing is, that it is during sermon only that my mind flies off at a tangent and busies itself with things removed from the place and the circumstances. Whenever it is finished, fancy returns from her wander- ings, and I am alive to the objects around me. The clergyman knows my humor, and is good Christian enough to forgive me ; and he smiles good-huinoredly when I ask him to let me have the chapel keys, that I may enter, when in the mood, and preach a sermon to myself. To my mind, an empty chapel is impressive ; a crowded one, comparatively a commonplace affair. Alone, I could choose my own text, and my silent DKEAMTHORP. 125 discourse would not be without its practical applica- tions. An idle life I live in this place, as the world counts it ; but then I have the satisfaction of differing from the world as to the meaning of idleness. A windmill twirl- ing its arms all day is admirable only when there is corn to grind. Twirling its arms for the mere barren pleas- ure of twirling them, or for the sake of looking busy, does not deserve any rapturous paean of praise. I must be made happy after my own fashion, not after the fashion of other people. Here I can live as I please ; here I can throw the reins on the neck of my whim. Here I play with my own thoughts; here I ripen for the grave. A BACHELOR'S REVERT. BY DONALD G. MITCHELL. HAVE got a quiet farm-house in the country, a very humble place, to be sure, tenanted by a worthy enough man, of the old New England stamp, where I sometimes go for a day or two in the winter, to look over the farm-accounts, and to see how the stock is thriving on the winter's keep. One side the door, as you enter from the porch, is a little parlor, scarce twelve feet by ten, with a cosey -looking fireplace, a heavy oak floor, a couple of arm-chairs, and a brown table with carved lion's feet. Out of this room opens a little cabinet, only big enough for a broad bachelor bedstead, where I sleep upon feathers, and wake in the morning, with my eye upon a saucy colored lithographic print of some fancy " Bessy." It happens to be the only house in the world of which I am bonafide owner ; and I take a vast deal of comfort in treating it just as I choose. I manage to break some article of furniture almost every time I pay it a visit ; and if I cannot open the window readily of a morning, to breathe the fresh air, I knock out a pane or two of glass 127 with my boot. I lean against the walls in a very old arm-chair there is on the premises, and scarce ever fail to worry such a hole in the plastering as would set me down for a round charge for damages in town, or make a prim housewife fret herself into a raging fever. I laugh out loud with myself, in my big arm-chair, when I think that I am neither afraid of one nor the other. As for the fire, I keep the little hearth so hot as to warm half the cellar below, and the whole space between the jambs roars for hours together with white flame. To be sure, the windows are not very tight, between broken panes and bad joints, so that the fire, large as it is, is by no means an extravagant comfort. As night approaches, I have a huge pile of oak and hickory placed beside the hearth ; I put out the tallow candle on the mantel (using the family snuffers, with one leg broke), then, drawing my chair directly in front of the blazing wood, and setting one foot on each of the old iron fire-dogs (until they grow too warm), I dispose my- self for an evening of such sober and thoughtful quie- tude as I believe, on my soul, that very few of my fellow- men have the good fortune to enjoy. My tenant meantime, in the other room, I can hear now and then though there is a thick stone chimney and a broad entry between multiplying contrivances with his wife to put two babies to sleep. This occupies them, I should say, usually an hour; though my only measure of time (for I never carry a watch into the country) is the blaze of my fire. By ten or thereabouts my stock of wood is nearly exhausted ; I pile upon the hot coals what remains, and sit watching how it kindles, 128 LITTLE CLASSICS. and blazes, and goes out, even like our joys ! and then slip by the light of the embers into my bed, \vhere I luxuriate in such sound and healthful slumber as only such rattling window-frames and country air can supply. But to return : the other evening, it happened to be on my last visit to my farm-house, when I had exhaust- ed all the ordinary rural topics of thought, had formed all sorts of conjectures as to the income of the year, had planned a new wall around one lot, and the clearing up of another, now covered with patriarchal wood, and wondered if the little rickety house would not be, after all, a snug enough box to live and die in, I fell on a sudden into such an unprecedented line of thought, which took such deep hold of my sympathies, sometimes even starting tears, that I determined, the next day, to set as much of it as I could recall on paper. Something it may have been the home -looking blaze (I am a bachelor of say six-aud-twenty), or possibly a plaintive cry of the baby in my tenant's room had sug- gested to me the thought of Marriage. I piled upon the heated fire-dogs the last armful of my wood ; and now, said I, bracing myself courageously between the arms of my chair, I '11 not flinch ; I '11 pursue the thought wherever it leads, though it lead me to the d (I am apt to be hasty) at least continued I, softening until my fire is out. The wood was green, and at first showed no disposition to blaze. It smoked furiously. Smoke, thought I, always goes before blaze ; and so does doubt go before decision : and my Revery, from that very starting-point, slipped into this shape. EEVEEY. 129 I SMOKE, SIGNIFYING DOUBT, A WIFE ? thought I ; yes, a wife ! And why? And pray, my dear sir, why not why? Why not doubt ? why not hesitate ? why not tremble ? Does a man buy a ticket in a lottery, a poor man, whose whole earnings go in to secure the ticket, with- out trembling, hesitating, and doubting ? Can a man stake his bachelor respectability, his inde- pendence and comfort, upon the die of absorbing, un- changing, relentless marriage, without trembling at the venture ? Shall a man who has been free to chase his fancies over the wide world, without let or hindrance, shut him- self up to marriage-ship, within four walls called Home, that are to claim him, his time, his trouble, and his tears, thenceforward forevermore, without doubts thick and thick-coming as Smoke ? Shall he who has been hitherto a mere observer of other men's cares and business, moving off where they made him sick of heart, approaching whenever and wherever they made him gleeful, shall he now undertake administration of just such cares and business, without qualms? Shall he whose whole life has been but a nimble succession of escapes from trifling difficulties now broach without doubtings that Matrimony, where, if difficulty beset him, there is no escape ? Shall this brain of mine, careless-working, never tired with idleness, 6* I 130 LITTLE CLASSICS. feeding on long vagaries, and high, gigantic castles, dreaming out beatitudes hour by hour, turn itself at length to such dull taskwork as thinking out a livelihood for wife and children ? Where thenceforward will be those sunny dreams, in which I have warmed my fancies and my heart, and lighted my eye with crystal ? This very marriage, which a brilliant working imagination has invested time and again with brightness and -delight, can serve no longer as a mine for teeming fancy : all, alas, will be gone, reduced to the dull standard of the actual ! No more room for intrepid forays of imagination, no more gor- geous realm-making, all will be over ! Why not, I thought, go on dreaming ? Can any wife be prettier than an after-dinner fancy, idle and yet vivid, can paint for you ? Can any children make less noise than the little rosy-cheeked ones who have no existence, except in the omnium gatherum of your own brain ? Can any housewife be more unex- ceptionable than she who goes sweeping daintily the cobwebs that gather in your dreams ? Can any domestic larder be better stocked than the private larder of your head dozing on a cushioned chair-back at Delmonico's ? Can any family purse be better filled than the exceeding plump one you dream of, after reading such pleasant books as Munchausen or Typee ? But if, after all, it must be, duty or what not making provocation, what then ? And I clapped my feet hard against the fire-dogs, and leaned back, and turned my face to the ceiling, as much as to say, And where on earth, then, shall a poor devil look for a wife : 131 Somebody says, Lyttleton or Shaftesbury I think, that " marriages would be happier if they were all arranged by the Lord Chancellor." Unfortunately, we have no Lord Chancellor to make this commutation of our misery. Shall a man then scour the country on a mule's back, like Honest Gil Bias of Santillane; or shall he make application to some such intervening providence as Ma- dame St. Marc, who, as I see by the Presse, manages these matters to one's hand, for some five per cent on the fortunes of the parties ? I have trouted when the brook was so low and the sky so hot that I might as well have thrown my fly upon the turnpike ; and I have hunted hare at noon, and wood- cock in snow-time, never despairing, scarce doubting; but for a poor hunter of his kind, without traps or snares, or any aid of police or constabulary, to traverse the world, where are swarming, on a moderate computation, some three hundred and odd millions of unmarried women, for a single capture, irremediable, unchangeable, and yet a capture which by strange metonymy, not laid down in the books, is very apt to turn captor into captive, and make game of hunter, all this surely, surely may make a man shrug with doubt ! Then, again, there are the plaguy wife's relations. Who knows how many third, fourth, or fifth cousins will appear at careless complimentary intervals, long after you had settled into the placid belief that all congratulatory visits were at an end? How many twisted-headed brothers will be putting in their advice, as a friend to 132 LITTLE CLASSICS. How many maiden aunts will come to spend a month or two with their " dear Peggy," and want to know, every tea-time, " if she is n't a dear love of a wife " ? Then, dear father-in-law will beg (taking dear Peggy's hand in his) to give a little wholesome counsel ; and will be very sure to advise just the contrary of what you had deter- mined to undertake. And dear manima-in-law must set her nose into Peggy's cupboard, and insist upon having the key to your own private locker in the wainscot. Then, perhaps, there is a little bevy of dirty-nosed nephews who come to spend the holidays, and eat up your East India sweetmeats ; and who are forever tramp- ing over your head, or raising the Old Harry below, while you are busy with your clients. Last, and worst, is some fidgety old uncle, forever too cold or too hot, who vexes you with his patronizing airs, and impudently kisses his little Peggy! That could be borne, however : for perhaps he has promised his fortune to Peggy. Peggy, then, will be rich (and the thought made me rub my shins, which were now getting comfortably warm upon the fire-dogs). Then she will be forever talking of her fortune ; and pleasantly reminding you, on occasion of a favorite pur- chase, how lucky that she had the means ; and drop- ping hints about economy ; and buying very extravagant Paisleys. She will annoy you by looking over the stock-list at breakfast-time ; and mention quite carelessly to your clients that she is interested in such or such a specula- tion. She will be provokingly silent when you hint to a 133 tradesman that you have not the money by you for his small bill ; in short, she will tear the life out of you, making you pay in righteous retribution of annoyance, grief, vexation, shame, and sickness of heart ior the superlative folly of " marrying rich." But if not rich, then poor. Bah! the thought made me stir the coals ; but there was still no blaze. The paltry earnings you are able to wring out of clients by the sweat of your brow will now be all our income ; you will be pestered for pin-money, and pestered with your poor wife's relations. Ten to one, she will stickle about taste, " Sir Visto's," and want to make this so pretty, and that so charming, if she only had the means ; and is sure Paul (a kiss) can't deny his little Peggy such a trifling sum, and all for the common benefit. Then she, for one, means that her children sha' n't go a begging for clothes, and another pull at the purse. Trust a poor mother to dress her children in finery! Perhaps she is ugly : not noticeable at first, but growing on her, and (what is worse) growing faster on you. You wonder why you did n't see that vulgar nose long ago ; and that lip, it is very strange, you think, that you ever thought it pretty. And then, to come to breakfast with her hair looking as it does, and you not so much as daring to say, " Peggy, do brush your hair ! " Her foot, too, not very bad when decently chaussee, but now, since she's married, she does wear such infernal slippers ! And yet, for all this, to be prig- ging up for an hour, when any of my old chums come to dine with me ! 134 LITTLE CLASSICS. "Bless your kind hearts! my dear fellows," said I, thrusting the tongs into the coals, and speaking out loud, as if my voice could reach from Virginia to Paris, " not married yet ! " Perhaps Peggy is pretty enough, only shrewish. No matter for cold coffee ; you should have been up before. What sad, thin, poorly cooked chops, to eat with your rolls! She thinks they are very good, and wonders how you can set such an example to your children. - The butter is nauseating. She has no other, and hopes you '11 not raise a storm about butter a little turned. I think I see myself ruminated I sitting meekly at table, scarce daring to lift up my eyes, utterly fagged out with some quar- rel of yesterday, choking down detestably sour muffins, that my wife thinks are " delicious," slipping in dried mouthfuls of burnt ham off the side of my fork -tines, slipping off my chair sidewise at the end, and slipping out with my hat between my knees, to business, and never feeling myself a competent, sound-minded man, till the oak door is between me and Peggy! " Ha, ha, not yet ! " said I ; and in so earnest a tone, that my dog started to his feet, cocked his eye to have a good look into my face, met my smile of triumph with an amiable wag of the tail, and curled up again in the corner. Again, Peggy is rich enough, well enough, mild enough, only she does n't care a fig for you. She has married you because father or grandfather thought the match eligible, A BACHELOE/S REVERY. 135 and because she did n't wish to disoblige them. Besides, she didn't positively hate you, and thought you were a respectable enough young person; she has told you so repeatedly at dinner. She wonders you like to read poetry; she wishes you would buy her a good cook- book; and insists upon your making your will at the birth of the first baby. She thinks Captain So-aud-So a splendid-looking fel- low, and wishes you would trim up a little, were it only for appearance' sake. You need not hurry up from the office so early at night ; she, bless her dear heart ! does not feel lonely. You read to her a love-tale ; she interrupts the pathetic parts with directions to her seamstress. You read of marriages ; she sighs, and asks if Captain So-and-So has left town ! She hates to be mewed up in a cottage, or between brick walls ; she does so love the Springs ! But, again, Peggy loves you; at least, she swears it, with her hand on " The Sorrows of Werther." She has pin-money which she spends for the "Literary World" and the "Friends in Council." She is not bad-looking, save a bit too much of forehead ; nor is she sluttish, unless a neglige till three o'clock and an ink-stain on the fore- finger be sluttish : but then she is such a sad blue ! You never fancied, when you saw her buried in a three- volume novel, that it was anything more than a girlish vagary; and when she quoted Latin, you thought, innocently, that she had a capital memory for her samplers. But to be bored eternally about divine Dante and funny Goldoni is too bad. Your copy of Tasso, a treas- 136 LITTLE CLASSICS. lire-print of 16SO, is all bethumbed and dog's-eared, and spotted with baby-gruel. Even your Seneca an Elzevir is all sweaty with handling. She adores La Fontaine, reads Balzac with a kind of artist -scowl, and will not let Greek alone. You hint at broken rest and an aching head at break- fast, and she will fling you a scrap of Anthology, in lieu of the camphor-bottle, or chant the alal alal, of tragic chorus. The nurs3 is getting dinner ; you are holding the baby; Peggy is reading Bruyere. The fire smoked thick as pitch, and puffed out little clouds over the chimney-piece. I gave the fore-stick a kick at the thought of Peggy, baby, and Bruyere. Suddenly the flame flickered bluely athwart the smoke, caught at a twig below, rolled round the mossy oak-stick, twined among the crackling tree- limbs, mounted, lit up the whole body of smoke, and blazed out cheerily and bright. Doubt vanished with Smoke, and Hope began with Flame. n. BLAZE, SIGNIFYING CHEEE. I PUSHED my chair back ; drew up another ; stretched out my feet cosily upon it, rested my elbows on the chair- arms, leaned my head on one hand, and looked straight into the leaping and dancing flame. 137 Love is a flame, ruminated I ; and (glancing round the room) how a flame brightens up a man's habitation ! "Carlo," said I, calling up my dog into the light, " good fellow, Carlo ! " And I patted him kindly, and he wagged his tail, and laid his nose across my knee, and looked wistfully up in my face ; then strode away, turned to look again, and lay down to sleep. " Pho, the brute ! " said I ; "it is not enough, after all, to like a dog." If now in that chair yonder, not the one your feet lie upon, but the other, beside you, closer yet, were seated a sweet-faced girl, with a pretty little foot lying out upon the hearth, a bit of lace running round the swelling throat, the hair parted to a charm over a forehead fair as any of your dreams ; and if you could reach an arm around that chair-back, without fear of giving offence, and suffer your fingers to play idly with those curls that escape down the neck ; and if you could clasp with your other hand those little white, taper fin- gsrs of hers, which lie so temptingly within reach, and so, talk softly and low in presence of the blaze, while the hours slip without knowledge, and the winter winds whistle uncared for ; if, in short, you were no bachelor, but the husband of some such sweet image (dream, call it rather), would it not be far pleasanter than this cold single night-sitting, counting the sticks, reckon- ing the length of the blaze and the height of the falling snow? And if some or all of those wild vagaries that grow on your fancy at such an hour you could whisper into lis- tening, because loving ears, ears not tired with listen- 138 LITTLE CLASSICS. ing, because it is you who whisper, ears ever indulges, because eager to praise; and if your darkest fancies were lit up, not merely with bright wood-fire, but with a ringing laugh of that sweet face turned up in fond re- buke, how far better than to be waxing black and sour over pestilential humors alone your very dog And if when a glowing thought comes into your brain, quick and sudden, you could tell it over as to a second self, to that sweet creature, who is not away, because sl.o loves to be there ; and if you could watch the thought catching that girlish mind, illuming that fair brow, spark- ling in those pleasantest of eyes, how far better than to feel it slumbering, and going out, heavy, lifeless, and dead, in your own selfish fancy. And if a generous emo- tion steals over you, coming you know not whither, would there not be a richer charm in lavishing it in caress or endearing word upon that fondest and most dear one, than in patting your glossy-coated dog, or sink- ing lonely to smiling slumbers ? How would not benevolence ripen with such monitor to task it ! How would not selfishness grow faint and dull, leaning ever to that second self, which is the loved one ! How would not guile shiver and grow weak, be- fore that girl-brow, and eye of innocence ! How would not all that boyhood prized of enthusiasm and quick blood and life renew itself hi such presence ! The fire was getting hotter, and I moved into the mid- dle of the room. The shadows the flames made were playing like fairy forms over floor and wall and ceiling. My fancy would surely quicken, thought I, if such BE VERY. 139 being were in attendance. Surely imagination would be stronger and purer, if it could have the playful fancies of dawning womanhood to delight it. All toil would be torn from mind-labor, if but another heart grew into this present soul, quickening it, warming it, cheering it, bid- ding it ever God speed ! Her face would make a halo, rich as a rainbow, atop of all such noisome things as we lonely souls call trouble. Her smile would illumine the blackest of crowding cares ; and darkness, that now seats you despondent hi your solitary chair for days together, weaving bitter fancies, dreaming bitter dreams, would grow light and thin, and spread and float away, chased by that beloved smile. Your friend, poor fellow ! dies : never mind, that gentle clasp of her fingers, as she steals behind you, tell- ing you not to weep, it is worth ten friends ! Your sister, sweet one, is dead, buried. The worms are busy with all her fairness. How it makes you think earth nothing but a spot to dig graves upon ! It is more : she, she says, will be a sister ; and the waving curls as she leans upon your shoulder touch your cheek, and your wet eye turns to meet those other eyes, God has sent his angel, surely ! Your mother, alas for it, she is gone ! Is there any bitterness to a youth alone and homeless, like this ? But you are not homeless ; you are not alone : she is there; her tears softening yours, her smile lighting yours, her grief killing yours; and you live again, to assuage that kind sorrow of hers. Then, those children, rosy, fair-haired; no, they do not disturb you with their prattle now, they are yours ! 140 LITTLE CLASSICS. Toss away there on the greensward; never mind the hyacinths, the snowdrops, the violets, if so be any are there ; the perfume of their healthful lips is worth all the flowers of the world. No need now to gather wild bouquets to love and cherish ; flower, tree, gum, are all dead things; things livelier hold your soul. And she, the mother, sweetest and fairest of all, watching, tending, caressing, loving, till your own heart grows pained with tenderest jealousy, and cures itself with loving. You have no need now of any cold lecture to teach thankfulness : your heart is full of it. No need now, as once, of bursting blossoms, of trees taking leaf and greenness, to turn thought kindly and thankfully; for ever beside you there is bloom, and ever beside you there is fruit, for which eye, heart, and soul are full of un- known and unspoken, because unspeakable, thank-offer- ing- And if sickness catches you, binds you, lays you down, no lonely meanings, and wicked curses at careless- stepping nurses. The step is noiseless, and yet distinct beside you. The white curtains are drawn or with- drawn by the magic of that other presence ; and the soft, cool hand is upon your brow. No cold comfortings of friend- watchers, merely come in to steal a word away from that outer world which is pulling at their skirts ; but, ever, the sad, shaded brow of her whose lightest sorrow for your sake is your great- est grief, if it were not a greater joy. The blaze was leaping light and high, and the wood falling under the growing heat. 141 So, continued I, this heart would be at length it- self; striving with everything gross, even now as it clings to grossness. Love would make its strength native and progressive. Earth's cares would fly. Joys would double; susceptibilities be quickened; Love master itself,- and, having made the mastery, stretch onward and upward toward Infinitude. And if the end came, and sickness brought that fol- lower Great Follower which sooner or later is sure to come after, then the heart and the hand of Love, ever near, are giving to your tired soul, daily and hourly, lessons of that love which consoles, which triumphs, which circleth all, and centreth in all, Love Infinite and Divine ! Kind hands none but hers will smooth the hair upon your brow as the chill grows damp and heavy on it ; and her fingers none but hers will lie in yours as the wasted flesh stiffens and hardens for the ground. Her tears you could feel no others, if oceans fell will warm your drooping features once more to life; once more your eye, lighted in joyous triumph, will kindle in her smile, and then The fire fell upon the hearth; the blaze gave a last leap a flicker then another caught a little remain- ing twig blazed up wavered went out. There was nothing but a bed of glowing embers, over which the white ashes gathered fast. I was alone, with only my dog for company. 142 LITTLE CLASSICS. m. ASHES, SIGNIFYING DESOLATION, AFTER all, thought I, ashes follow blaze, inevitably as Death follows Life. Misery treads on the heels of Joy; Anguish rides swift after Pleasure. " Come to nie again, Carlo," said I, to my dog ; and I patted him fondly once more, but now only by the light of the dying embers. It is very little pleasure one takes in fondling brute favorites ; but it is a pleasure that, when it passes, leaves no void. It is only a little alleviating redundance in your solitary heart -life, which, if lost, another can be supplied. But if your heart, not solitary, not quieting its humors with mere love of chase or dog, not repressing year after year its earnest yearnings after something bet- ter and more spiritual, has fairly linked itself by bonds strong as life to another heart, is the casting off easy then? Is it then only a little heart-redundancy cut off, which the next bright sunset will fill up ? And my fancy, as it had painted doubt under the smoke, and cheer under warmth of the blaze, so now it began under the faint light of the smouldering embers to picture heart -desolation. What kind congratulatory letters, hosts of them, coming from old and half-forgotten friends, now that your happiness is a year or two years old! "Beautiful." 143 Ay, to be sure, beautiful ! "Rich." Pho, the dawdler! how little he knows of heart- treasure, who speaks of wealth to . a man who loves his wife as a wife only should be loved ! "Young." Young indeed; guileless as infancy, charming as the morning. Ah, these letters bear a sting: they bring to mind, with new and newer freshness, if it be possible, the value of that which you tremble lest you lose. How anxiously you watch that step, if it lose not its buoyancy ; how you study the color on that cheek, if it grow not fainter ; how you tremble at- the lustre in those eyes, if it be not the lustre of Death; how you totter under the weight of that muslin sleeve, a phan- tom weight! How you fear to do it, and yet press forward, to note if that breathing be quickened, as you ascend the home-heights, to look off on sunset lighting the plain. Is your sleep quiet sleep, after that she has whispered to you her fears, and in the same breath soft as a sigh, sharp as an arrow bid you hear it bravely ? Perhaps the embers were now glowing fresher, a little kindling before the ashes she triumphs over disease. But Poverty, the world's almoner, has come to you with ready, spare hand. Alone, with your dog living on bones, and you on hope, kindling each morning, dying slowly each night, this could be borne. Philosophy would bring home 144 LITTLE CLASSICS. its stores to the lone man. Money is not in his hand, but Knowledge is in his brain ! and from that brain he draws out faster, as he draws slower from his pocket. He remembers; and on remembrance he can live for days and weeks. The garret, if a garret covers him, is rich in fancies. The rain, if it pelts, pelts only him used to rain-peltings. And his dog crouches not in dread, but in companionship. His crust he divides with him and laughs. He crowns himself with glorious memories of Cervantes, though he begs : if he nights it under the stars, he dreams heaven-sent dreams of the prisoned and homeless Galileo. He hums old sonnets, and snatches of poor Jonson's plays. He chants Dryden's odes, and dwells on Otway's rhyme. He reasons with BoHugbroke or Diogenes, as the humor takes him, and laughs at the world : for the world, thauk Heaven, has let him alone ! Keep your money, old misers, and your places, old princes, the world is mine! " I care not, Fortune, what you me deny. You cannot rob me of free nature's grace, You cannot shut the windows of the sky, You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living streams, at eve. Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the great children leave. Of Fancy, Reason, Virtue, naught can me bereave ! " But if not alone ? If she is clinging to you for support, for consolation, for home, for life, she, reared in luxury perhaps, is faint for bread? 145 Then the iron enters the soul ; then the nights darken under any skylight. Then the days grow long, even in the solstice of winter. She may not complain ; what then ? Will your heart grow strong, if the strength of her love can dam up the fountains of tears, and the tied tongue not tell of bereavement ? Will it solace you to find her parting the poor treasure of food you have stolen for her, with begging, foodless children? But tlus ill strong hands and Heaven's help will put down. Wealth again ; Flowers again ; Patrimonial acres again; Brightness again. But your little Bessy, your favorite child, is pining. Would to God ! you say in agony, that wealth could bring fulness again into that blanched cheek, or round those little thin lips once more ; but it cannot. Thinner and thinner they grow ; plaintive and more plaintive her sweet voice. "Dear Bessy," and your tones tremble; you feel that she is on the edge of the grave. Can you pluck her back ? Can endearments stay her ? Business is heavy, away from the loved child; home you go, to fondle while yet time is left, but this time you are too late. She is gone. She cannot hear you ; she cannot thank you for the violets you put within her stiff white hand. And then the grassy mound the cold shadow of nead-stone ! The wind, growing with the night, is rattling at the window-panes, and whistles dismally. I wipe a tear, and, in the interval of my Revery, thank God that I am no such mourner. VOL. iv. 7 j 146 LITTLE CLASSICS. But gayety, snail-footed, creeps back to the household. All is bright again, " The violet bed 's not sweeter Than the delicious breath marriage sends forth." Her lip is rich and full, her cheek delicate as a flower. Her frailty doubles your love. And the little one she clasps, frail too, too frail : the boy you had set your hopes and heart on. You have watched him growing, ever prettier, ever winning more and more upon your soul. The love you bore to him when he first lisped names your name and hers has doubled in strength now that he asks innocently to be taught of this or that, and promises you, by that quick curiosity that flashes in his eye, a mind full of intelligence. And some hair-breadth escape by sea or flood, that he perhaps may have had, which unstrung your soul to such tears as you pray God may be spared you again, has endeared the little fellow to your heart a thousand- fold. And now, with his pale sister in the grave, all that love has come away from the mound where worms feast, and centres on the boy. How you watch the storms lest they harm him ! How often you steal to his bed late at night, and lay your hand lightly upon the brow, where the curls cluster thick, rising and falling with the throbbing temples, and watch, for minutes together, the little lips half parted, and listen your ear close to them if the breathing be regular and sweet! A BACHELOR'S REVERT. 147 But the day comes the night rather when you can catch no breathing. Ay, put your hair away, compose yourself, listen again. No, there is nothing ! Put your hand now to his brow, damp indend, but not with healthful night-sleep ; it is not your hand, no, do not deceive yourself, it is your loved boy's forehead that is so cold ; and your loved boy will never speak to you again, never play again : he is dead ! 0, the tears, the tears; what blessed things are tears ! Never fear now to let them fall on his forehead, or his lip, lest you waken him ! Clasp him, clasp him harder : you cannot hurt, you cannot waken him ! Lay him down, gently or not, it is the same : he is stiff; he is stark and cold. But courage is elastic ; it is our pride. It recovers itself easier, thought I, than these embers will get into blaze again. But courage and patience and faith and hope have their limit. Blessed be the man who escapes such trial as will determine limit ! To a lone man it comes not near ; for how can trial take hold where there is nothing by which to try ? A funeral ? You reason with philosophy. A grave- yard ? You read Hervey, and muse upon the wall. A friend dies ? You sigh, you pat your dog : it is over. Losses ? You retrench, you light your pipe : it is forgotten. Calumny ? You laugh, you sleep. But with that childless wife clinging to you in love and sorrow, what then ? 148 LITTLE CLASSICS. Can you take down Seneca now, and coolly blow the dust from the leaf-tops ? Can you crimp your lip with Voltaire ? Can you smoke idly, your feet dangling with the ivies, your thoughts all waving fancies upon a church- yard wall, a wall that borders the grave of your boy ? Can you amuse yourself by turning stinging Martial into rhyme ? Can you pat your dog, and, seeing him wakeful and kind, say, " It is enough" ? Can you sneer at calumny, and sit by your fire dozing ? Blessed, thought I again, is the man who escapes such trial as will measure the limit of patience and the limit of courage ! But the trial comes : colder and colder were growing the embers. That wife, over whom your love broods, is fading. Not beauty fading ; that, now that your heart is wrapped in her being, would be nothing. She sees with quick eye your dawning apprehension, and she tries hard to make that step of hers elastic. Your trials and your loves together have centred your affections. They are not now as when you were a lone man, widespread and superficial. They have caught from domestic attachments a finer tone and touch. They cannot shoot out tendrils into barren world-soil and suck up thence strengthening nutriment. They have grown under the forcing- glass*of home -roof, they will not now bear exposure. You do not now look men in the face as if a heart- bond was linking you, as if a community of feeling lay between. There is a heart-bond that absorbs all others ; there is a community that monopolizes your feeling. 149 When the heart lay wide open, before it had grown upon and closed around particular objects, it could take strength and cheer from a hundred connections that now seem colder than ice. And now those particular objects alas for you ! are failing. What anxiety pursues you ! How you struggle to fancy there is no danger ; how she struggles to persuade you there is no danger ! How it grates now on your ear, the toil and turmoil of the city ! It was music when you were alone ; it was pleasant even, from the din you were elaborating comforts for the cherished objects ; when you had such sweet- escape as evening drew on. Now it maddens you to see the world careless wliile you are steeped in care. They hustle you in the street ; they smile at you across the table ; they bow carelessly over the way ; they do not know what canker is at your heart. The undertaker comes with his bill for the dead boy's funeral. He knows your grief ; he is respectful. You bless him in your soul. You wish the laughing street- goers were all undertakers. Your eye follows the physician as he leaves your house : is he wise ? you ask yourself ; is he prudent ? is he the best ? Did he never fail ? is he never forgetful ? And now the hand that touches yours, is it no thin- ner, no whiter than yesterday ? Sunny days come when she revives ; color comes back ; she breathes freer ; she picks flowers ; she meets you with a smile : hope lives again. 150 LITTLE CLASSICS. But the next day of storm she is fallen. She cannot talk even ; she presses your hand. You hurry away from business before your time. What matter for clients, who is to reap the rewards ? What matter for fame, whose eye will it brighten ? What matter for riches, whose is the inheritance ? You find her propped with pillows ; she is looking over a little picture-book bethunibed by the dear boy she has lost. She hides it in her chair ; she has pity on you. Another day of revival, when the spring sun shines, and flowers open out of doors ; she leans on your arm, and strolls into the garden where the first birds are singing. Listen to them with her ; what memories are in bird-songs ! You need not shudder at her tears, they are tears of thanksgiving. Press the hand that lies light upon your arm, and you, too, thank God, while yet you may ! You are early home, mid-afternoon. Your step is not light ; it is heavy, terrible. They have sent for you. She is lying down ; her eyes half closed ; her breath- ing long and interrupted. She hears you ; her eyes open ; you put your hand in hers ; yours trembles : hers does not. Her lips move ; it is your name. " Be strong," she says ; " God will help you ! " She presses harder your hand : " Adieu ! " A long breath another ; you are alone again. No tears now ; poor man ! You cannot find them ! 151 Again home early. There is a smell of varnish in your house. A coffin is there ; they have clothed the body in decent grave-clothes, and the undertaker is screwing down the lid, slipping round on tiptoe. Does he fear to waken her ? He asks you a simple question about the inscription upon the plate, rubbing it with his coat-cuff. You look him straight in the eye ; you motion to the door ; you dare not speak. He takes up his hat and glides out stealthful as a cat. The man has done his work well for all. It is a nice coffin, a very nice coffin ! Pass your hand over it, how smooth ! Some sprigs of mignonette are lying carelessly in a little gilt-edged saucer. She loved mignonette. It is a good stanch table the coffin rests on: it ia your table ; you are a housekeeper, a man of family ! Ay, of family ! keep down outcry, or the nurse will be in. Look over at the pinched features ; is this all that is left of her ? And where is your heart now ? No, don't thrust your nails into your hands, nor mangle your lip, nor grate your teeth together. If you could only weep ! Another day. The coffin is gone out. The stupid mourners have wept, what idle tears ! She, with your crushed heart, has gone out ! Will you have pleasant evenings at your home now ? Go into your parlor that your prim housekeeper has made comfortable with clean hearth and blaze of sticks. Sit down in your chair; there is another velvet- cushioned one, over against yours, empty. You press 152 LITTLE CLASSICS. your fingers on your eyeballs, as if you would press out something that hurt the brain; but you cannot. Your head leans upon your hand; your eye rests upon the flashing blaze. Ashes always come after blaze. Go now into the room where she was sick, softly, lest the prim housekeeper come after. They have put new dimity upon her chair ; they have hung new curtains over the bed. They have removed from the stand its phials and silver bell ; they have put a little vase of flowers in their place ; the perfume will not offend the sick sense now. They have half opened . the window, that the room so long closed may have air. It will not be too cold. She is not there. God ! thou who dost temper the wind to the shorn lamb, be kind ! The embers were dark. I stirred them ; there was no sign of life. My dog was asleep. The clock in my tenant's chamber had struck one. I dashed a tear or two from my eyes : how they came there I know not. I half ejaculated a prayer of thanks, that such desolation had not yet come nigh me ; and a prayer of hope, that it might never come. In a half-hour more I was sleeping soundly. My rev- ery was ended. THE GRAMMAR OP LIFE. BY BENJAMIN F. TAYLOR. JONG time ago," some day this month, you and I should remember exactly, a man was born whose name has been to the juvenile world " a household word" ; sometimes a word of terror, but now, as I remember it, a word to conjure with, to wave up scenes and forms long faded and crumbled. LINDLEY MURRAY ! Did you ever hear of him ? And do you not remember his little book, that like another " little book " was " bitter," and never sweet at all ? And don't you recollect how firmly it was bound, old Ironsides that it was, and what was on the fly-leaf, John, or James, or David Somebody, "his book," and that Lochiel-like couplet, " Steal not this book, my honest friend, For fear the gallows shall be your end," and who printed it, H. and E. Phinney, and the year, 1800 and something ? Shut your eyes now, and you can see every page of that old grammar ; just where the noun began, and the "verb to be," and Syntax, with its terrible code of twenty-two, exactly twenty-two rules. 7* 154 LITTLE CLASSICS. And how like quarter-horses we plunged through the moods and tenses of the verb " Love " ! Who has forgotten, or who ever can forget, how it went, and we went ? "I love, loved, have loved, had loved, shall or will love, shall have loved." On we darted, through the cans and the coulds and the mights of the potential, and the mysterious contingencies of the subjunctive, till we rounded to on the trio of participles that brought up the rear of this marvellous cavalcade of deeds, probable and possible, present, past, and future, in the great art and action of loving. And then, when you came to prepositions, how they puzzled you, how they puzzled us all ! Don't you remember the definition? Right-hand page, four lines from the top, just before conjunctions, on the threshold of Syntax? Thus it ran : " Prepositions are words used to connect words, and show the relation between them " ; or, to give little Joe Miller's or some other little fellow's version, " Pep'sition word used c'nect words show 'lation 'tween 'em." Showed " relation," did they ? And what rela- tion? Blood relation, or relation by marriage? And so we puzzled and pondered, and passed it over, and learned " the list," that went like a flock of sheep over a wall, " of, to, for, by, with, in." And who has forgotten those queer contrivances of conjunctions, that connected and did n't connect ? And what a God-send the interjection was, in the 'midst of the fog, with its oh ! ah ! and alas ! Often had we employed it ; we understood, felt, appreciated it. Then the wonderful process they called " Parsing," - THE GRAMMAR OF LIFE. 155 wonder if they do it yet ; when we used to take couplets from the prince of English rhyme, and, a row of little cannibals that we were, there we stood, beneath the unwinking optics of our teacher, and "transposed," alias mutilated, "paraphrased," alias butchered, and every- thing but devoured, his immortal lines ! Do you not recollect how we disposed of " In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear, whatever is, is right " ? After much science and little sense, the light used to burst upon our bedazzled intellects, about once a winter, that Pope meant to say, and did say, " whatever is right, is right ! " Do they dream in the grave ? Does the bard sleep peaceful yet? And where 's the boy that sat next, in the grammar elass? And the bright-eyed girl, that used to whisper the answer so softly to us, and save our juvenile palms many an acquaintance with the oaken ferule, where is she ? Does she whisper hope and happiness to anybody still ? Are her eyes as bright and her steps as light as of old ? Or has Death, that great bailiff, closed her eyes and set a seal upon her lips ? Who knows ? Who can tell? And the old schoolmaster, gray " as long ago as we can remember," gray before that, does he teach grammar still ? Is his step as firm and his eye as steel- like gray as it was wont to be then ? And the ancient schoolma'am, old Miss E., who lived in the yellow house next to the village green, and taught us spelling and etymology ; she too is conjured up by the 156 LITTLE CLASSICS. spell of " Old Murray/' and we see her looking over those spectacles, as she used to do when she meant to be " awful." One day she " put out " celibacy, and though 5 t was the name of her lonely state poor old lady ! that circumstance did n't let her into the pronunciation, and " sillybossy," for so she gave it, threw the class into convulsions. Great was her wrath on that memorable day. Two of us were imprisoned beneath the stairs ; two were sentenced to stand upon one foot ; one held in extended hand Walker's Dictionary, decidedly a great work was that dictionary ; and a lad who was desperately " afraid of the girls " was set between a bouncing brace of them. But it would n't do. " Sillybossy " would not down, and smothered sounds, chokings, outright laughter, broke forth from every corner, around the perplexed and angry schoolma'am. Years have fled ; the tenant of the old yellow house is doubtless borne away, and "the places that once knew her shall know her no more for- ever." So much for " Old Murray " and the memories it has awakened; and beautified by time, I can almost wish myself back again, in the midst of the days when Murray was a terror, and his pages a mystery. But why didn't "the master" hint, some time, that we should never be done with the tenses until we were done with time ? That the world is full of them? That the world is made of them ? That, for the sturdy, iron present tense, full of facts and figures, knocks and knowledge, we must look among the men in middle life, the diggers and workers of the world ; the men who, of all others, have discovered, for the very first time, at THE GRAMMAR OF LIFE. 157 forty or forty-five, that the present tense is now ; that in the shop, the store, the warehouse, the field, on docks and decks, the real, living present reigns supreme ? That, for the bright, golden, joyous future, full of the tones of silver bells and beating hearts, merry tongues and merry feet, you must look in our swarming schools, peep beneath little soft blankets in cradles at firesides, or examine small bundles of white dimity? That we should find the future astride of a rocking-horse ; lullaby- ing a wax baby ; flying kites, trundling hoops, or blowing penny- whistles ? Why did n't he tell us or did he leave that for the poets ? that they who wear the silver livery of Time, who linger tremblingly amid the din and jar of life, whose voices, like a failing fountain, are not musical as of old, that they are the melancholy past ? Why did n't he teach us or did he leave that for the preachers ? that " cold obstruction " claims all times for its own : glowing action, the present ; hope, the fu- ture ; and memory, the past ? ' c One pluperfect " ! Ah ! we have had that to ^^learn since. " One future" ! Who does not thank God that, in this world of ours, there are a myriad ? " I shall be," and " I might have been " ! The former the music of youth, sweet as the sound of silver bells ; fresh as " The breezy call of incense-breathing morn " ; the latter, the plaint of age, the dirge of hope, the inscription for a tomb. The one trembles upon thin, pale lips, parched with " life's fitful fever " ; the other swells from strong, young hearts, to lips rounded and 158 LITTLE CLASSICS. dewy, with the sweetness of hope and the fulness of strength. The one is timed by a heart that flutters, intermits, flutters, and wears out ; while that of the other beats right on, in the bold, stern march of life. " I shall be," and " I might have been " ! What toil and trouble, time and tears, are recorded in those little words, the very stenography of life ! How like a bugle-call is that " I shall be," from a young soul, strong in prophecy ! " I shall be great, honored, affluent, good" " I shall be," whispers the glad girl to herself, as, with one foot upon the threshold of womanhood, she catches the breath from the summer-fields of life, "I shall be loved by and by ! " That is her aspiration ; for to be loved is to be happy. " I shall be," says the struggling boy, " I shall be the possessor of a little home of my own, and a little wife, some day, and the home shall be ours, and the wife shall be mine, and then and then " Who can fill out those " thens " ? TTho, but the painter that has dipped his pen in sunset ? Who, but the poet whose lips have been touched with a coal fresh from the altar of inspira- tion ? " I shall be victorious yet," murmurs the man in the middle watch, who had been battling with foes till night fell, and is praying, like the Greek, for dawn again, that "he may see to fight." " I shall be," faintly breathes the languishing upon her couch of pain, "I shall be better to-morrow, or to- morrow " ; and she lives on, because she hopes on, and she grows strong with the " shall be " she has uttered. THE GRAMMAR OF LIFE. 159 And the strong man armed, who has " fought the good fight," and has " kept the faith," when they that sustained his extended hands through the battle are departing, and no Joshua to bid the declining sun " stand still," as he looks beyond the rugged hills of the world, and sees a window opened in heaven, and a wounded hand put forth in welcome, lays aside the armor he has worn so long and well, and going down into the dark river, he utters, with a hope glorified to faith, " I shall be over the Jordan to-morrow ! " Before the memory has a tomb in it, before it be- comes the cemetery of the soul, "I shall be " is beautiful as an old ballad. When graves are digged therein, and willows are planted, and hopes are buried, and no light breaks out of the cloud, then " I shall be " is as grand as an old paean. When " The battle is done, the harp unstrung, Its music trembling, dying," then " I shall be " is as sublime as an old prophecy ! But there is another tense in this Grammar of Life it were well to remember; the sparkling moment that dances out from the ripening hours, like golden grain, beneath the flails of Time, as we write, and even as we write, is gathered into the great garner of the Past. MY CHATEAUX. BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree. COLEHIDGE. AM the owner of great estates. Many of them lie in the West; but the greater part are in Spain. You may see my western possessions any evening at sunset, when their spires and battlements flash against the horizon. It gives me a feeling of pardonable importance, as a proprietor, that they are visible, to my eyes at least, from any part of the world in which I chance to be. In my long voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to India (the only voyage I ever made, when I was a boy and a supercargo), if I fell homesick, or sank into a re very of all the pleasant homes I had left behind, I had but to wait until sunset, and then looking toward the west, I beheld my clustering pinnacles and towers brightly bur- nished as if to salute and welcome me. So, in the city, if I get vexed and wearied, and cannot find my wonted solace in sallying forth at dinner-time to contemplate the gay world of youth and beauty hurrying MY CHATEAUX. 161 to the congress of fashion, or if I observe that years are deepening their tracks around the eyes of my wife Prue, I go quietly up to the house-top, toward evening, and refresh myself with a distant prospect of my estates. It is as dear to me as that of Eton to the poet Gray ; and, if I sometimes wonder at such moments whether I shall find those realms as fair as they appear, I am sud- denly reminded that the night-air may be noxious, and, descending, I enter the little parlor where Prue sits stitching, and surprise that precious woman by exclaim- ing, with the poet's pensive enthusiasm, " Thought would destroy their Paradise, No more ; where ignorance is bliss, 'T is folly to be wise." Columbus, also, had possessions in the West ; and as I read aloud the romantic story of his life, my voice quivers when I come to the point in which it is related that sweet odors of the land mingled with the sea-air, as the admiral's fleet approached the shores ; that tropical birds flew out and fluttered around the ships, glittering in the sun, the gorgeous promises of the new country ; that boughs, perhaps with blossoms not all decayed, floated out to welcome the strange wood from which the craft were hollowed. Then I cannot restrain myself. I think of the gorgeous visions I have seen before I have even undertaken the journey to the West, and I cry aloud to Prue, "What sun-bright birds, and gorgeous blossoms, and celestial odors will float out to us, my Prue, as we ap- proach our western possessions!" K 162 LITTLE CLASSICS. The placid Prae raises her eyes to mine with a reproof so delicate that it could not be trusted to words ; and, after a moment, she resumes her knitting, and I proceed. These are my western estates, but my finest castles are in Spain. It is a country famously romantic, and my castles are all of perfect proportions, and appropriately set in the most picturesque situations. I have never been to Spain myself, but I have naturally conversed much with travellers to that country ; although, I must allow, without deriving from them much substantial in- formation about my property there. The wisest of them told me that there were more holders of real estate in Spain than in any other region he had ever heard of, and they%e all great proprietors. Every one of them possesses a multitude of the stateliest castles. From conversation with them you easily gather that each one considers his own castles much the largest and in the loveliest positions. And, after I had heard this said, I verified it, by discovering that all my immediate neigh- bors in the city were great Spanish proprietors. One day as I raised my head from entering some long and tedious accounts in my books, and began to reflect that the quarter was expiring, and that I must begin to prepare the balance-sheet, I observed my subordinate in office, but not in years, (for poor old Titbottom will never see sixty again!) leaning on his hand, and much ab- stracted. " Are you not well, Titbottom ? " asked I. " Perfectly, but 1 was just building a castle in Spain," said he. I looked at his rusty coat, his faded hands, his sad MY CHATEAUX. 168 eye, and white hair for a moment, in great surprise, and then inquired, " Is it possible that you own property there too ? ' He shook his head silently; and still leaning on his hand, and with an expression in his eye as if he were looking upon the most fertile estate of Andalusia, he went on making his plans ; laying out his gardens, I suppose, building terraces for the vines, determining a library with a southern exposure, and resolving which should be the tapestried chamber. "What a singular whim," thought I, as I watched Titbottom, and filled up a check for four hundred dollars, my quarterly salary, " that a man who owns castles in Spain should be deputy book-keeper at nine hundred dollars a year!" When I went home I ate my dinner silently, and after- wards sat for a long time upon the roof of the house, looking at my western property, and thinking of Tit- bottom. It is remarkable that none of the proprietors have ever been to Spain to take possession and report to the rest of us the state of our property there. I, of course, can- not go, I am too much engaged. So is Titbottom. And I find it is the case with all the proprietors. We have so much to detain us at home that we cannot get away. But it is always so with rich men. Prue sighed once as she sat at the window and saw Bourne, the millionnaire, the president of innumerable companies, and manager and director of all the charitable societies in town, going by with wrinkled brow and hurried step. I asked her why she sighed. 164 LITTLE CLASSICS. " Because I was remembering that my mother used to tell me not to desire great riches, for they occasioned great cares," said she. " They do indeed," answered I, with emphasis, remem- bering Titbottom, and the impossibility of looking after my Spanish estates. Prue turned and looked at me with mild surprise; but I saw that her mind had gone down the street with Bourne. I could never discover if he held much Spanish stock. But I think he does. All the Spanish proprie- tors have a certain expression. Bourne has it to a re- markabl* degree. It is a kind of look, as if, in fact, a man's mind were in Spain. Bourne was an old lover of Prue's, and he is not married, which is strange for a man in his position. It is not easy for me to say how I know so much, as I certainly do, about my castles in Spain. The sun always shines upon them. They stand lofty and fair in a lumi- nous, golden atmosphere, a little hazy and dreamy, per- haps, like the Indian summer, but in which no gales blow and there are no tempests. All the sublime moun- tains, and beautiful valleys, and soft landscape, that I have not yet seen, are to be found in the grounds. They command a noble view of the Alps ; so fine, indeed, that I should be quite content with the prospect of them from the highest tower of my castle, and not care to go to Switzerland. The neighboring ruins, too, are as picturesque as those of Italy, and my desire of standing in the Coliseum, and of seeing the shattered arches of the Aqueducts stretch- ing along the Campagna and melting into the Alban MY CHATEAUX. 165 Mount, is entirely quenched. The rich gloom of my orange groves is gilded by fruit as brilliant of complexion and exquisite of flavor as any that ever dark-eyed Sor- rento girls, looking over the high plastered walls of Southern Italy, hand to the youthful travellers, climbing on donkeys up the narrow lane beneath. The Nile flows through my grounds. The Desert lies upon their edge, and Damascus stands in my garden. I am given to understand, also, that the Parthenon has been removed to my Spanish possessions. The Golden Horn is my fish-preserve ; my flocks of golden fleece are pastured on the plain of Marathon, and the honey of Hymettus is distilled from the flowers that grow in the vale of Enna, all in my Spanish domains. Erom the windows of those castles look the beautiful women whom I have never seen, whose portraits the poets have painted. They wait for me there, and chiefly the fair-haired child, lost to my eyes so long ago, now bloomed into an impossible beauty. The lights that never shone glance at evening in the vaulted halls, upon banquets that were never spread. The bands I have never collected play all night long, and enchant the brilliant company, that was never assembled, into si- lence. In the long summer mornings the children that I never had play in the gardens that I never planted. I hear their sweet voices sounding low and far away, call- ing, "Father! father!" I see the lost fair-haired girl, grown now into a woman, descending the stately stairs of my castle in Spain, stepping out upon the lawn, and playing with those children. They bound away together 166 LITTLE CLASSICS. down the garden ; but those voices linger, this time airily calling, " Mother ! mother ! " But there is a stranger magic than this in my Spanish estates. The lawny slopes on which, when a child, I played, in my father's old country-place, which was sold when he failed, are all there, and not a flower faded, nor a blade of grass sere. The green leaves have not fallen from the spring woods of half a century ago, and a gor- geous autumn has blazed undimmed for fifty years among the trees I remember. Chestnuts are not especially sweet to my palate now, but those with which I used to prick my fingers when gathering them in New Hampshire woods are exquisite as ever to ray taste, when I think of eating them in Spain. I never ride horseback now at home ; but in Spain, when I think of it, I bound over all the fences in the country, bare-backed upon the wildest horses. Sermons I am apt to find a little soporific in this country ; but in Spain I should listen as reverently as ever, for proprie- tors must set a good example on their estates. Plays are insufferable to me here, Prue and I never go. Prue, indeed, is not quite sure it is moral ; but the theatres in my Spanish castles are of a prodigious splen- dor, and when I think of going there, Prue sits in a front box with me, a kind of royal box, the good woman attired in such wise as I have never seen her here, while I wear my white waistcoat, which in Spain has no appearance of mending, but dazzles with immortal newness, and is a miraculous fit. Yes, and in those castles in Spain, Prue is not the placid, breeches-patching helpmate, with whom you are MY CHATEAUX. 167 acquainted, but her face has a bloom which we both re- member, and her movement a grace which my Spanish swans emulate, and her voice a music sweeter than those that orchestras discourse. She is always there what she seemed to me when I feU in love with her, many and many years ago. The neighbors called her then a nice, capable girl ; and certainly she did knit and darn with a zeal and success to which my feet and my legs have testi- fied for nearly half a century. But she could spin a finer web than ever came from cotton, and in its subtle meshes my heart was entangled, and there has reposed softly and happily ever since. The neighbors declared she could make pudding and cake better than any girl of her age ; but stale bread from Prue's hand was ambrosia to my palate. "She who makes everything well, even to making neighbors speak well of her, will surely make a good wife," said I to myself when I knew her ; and the echo of a half-century answers, " a good wife." So, when I meditate my Spanish castles, I see Prue in them as my heart saw her standing by her father's door. "Age cannot wither her." There is a magic in the Spanish air that paralyzes Time. He glides by unno- ticed and unnoticing. I greatly admire the Alps, which I see so distinctly from my Spanish windows ; I delight in the taste of the Southern fruit that ripens upon my terraces ; I enjoy the pensive shade of the Italian ruins in my gardens ; I like to shoot crocodiles, and talk with the Sphinx upon the shores of the Nile, flowing through my domain; I am glad to drink sherbet in Damascus, and fleece my flocks on the plains of Marathon ; but I 168 LITTLE CLASSICS. would resign all these forever rather than part with that Spanish portrait of Prue for a day. Nay, have I not resigned them all forever, to live with that portrait's changing original? I have often wondered how I should reach my castles. The desire of going comes over me very strongly some- times, and I endeavor to see how I can arrange my affairs so as to get away. To tell the truth, I am not quite sure of the route, I mean, to that particular part of Spain in which niy estates lie. I have inquired very particularly, but nobody seems to know precisely. One morning I met young Aspen, trembling with excitement, " What 's the matter ? " asked I with interest, for I knew that he held a great deal of Spanish stock. " Oh ! " said he, " I 'm going out to take possession. I have found the way to my castles in Spain." " Dear me ! " I answered, with the blood streaming into my face ; and, heedless of Prue, pulling my glove until it ripped, " what is it ? " "The direct route is through California," answered he. " But then you have the sea to cross afterward," said I, remembering the map. " Not at all," answered Aspen, " the road runs along the shore of the Sacramento River." He darted away from me, and I did not meet him again. I was very curious to know if he arrived safely in Spain, and was expecting every day to hear news from him of my property there, when one evening I bought an extra, full of California news, and the first thing upon which my eye fell was this : " Died, in San Francisco, MY CHATEAUX. 169 Edward Aspen, Esq., aged 35." There is a large body of the Spanish stockholders who believe with Aspen, and sail for California every week. I have not yet heard of their arrival out at their castles, but I suppose they are so busy with their own affairs there, that they have no time to write to the rest of us about the condition of our property. There was my wife's cousin, too, Jonathan Bud, who is a good, honest youth from the country, and, after a few weeks' absence, he burst into the office one day, just as I was balancing my books, and whispered to me, eagerly, " I 've found my castle in Spain." I put the blotting-paper in the leaf deliberately, for I was wiser now than when Aspen had excited me, and looked at my wife's cousin, Jonathan Bud, inquiringly. " Polly Bacon," whispered he, winking. I continued the interrogative glance. " She 's going to marry me, and she '11 show me the way to Spain," said Jonathan Bud, hilariously. " She '11 make you walk Spanish, Jonathan Bud," said I. And so she does. He makes no more hilarious re- marks. He never bursts into a room. He does not ask us to dinner. He says that Mrs. Bud does not like smoking. Mrs. Bud has nerves and babies. She has a way of saying " Mr. Bud ! " which destroys conversa- tion, and casts a gloom upon society. It occurred to me that Bourne, the millionnaire, must have ascertained the safest and most expeditious route to Spain ; so I stole a few minutes one afternoon, and VOL. IV. 8 170 LITTLE CLASSICS. went into his office. He was sitting at his desk, writing rapidly, and surrounded by files of papers and patterns, specimens, boxes, everything that covers the tables of a great merchant. In the outer rooms clerks were writing. Upon high shelves over their heads were huge chests, covered with dnst, dingy with age, many of them, and all marked with the name of the firm, in large black let- ters, " Bourne & Dye." They were all numbered also with the proper year ; some of them with a single capital B, and dates extending back into the last century, when old Bourne made the great fortune, before he went into partnership with Dye. Everything was indicative of im- mense and increasing prosperity. There were several gentlemen in waiting to converse with Bourne (we all call him so, familiarly, down town), and I waited until they went out. But others came in. There was no pause in the rush. All kinds of inquiries were made and answered. At length I stepped up. " A moment, please, Mr. Bourne." He looked up hastily, wished me good morning, which he had done to none of the others, and which courtesy I attributed to Spanish sympathy. "What is it, sir?" he asked blandly, but with wrin- kled brow. f ' Mr. Bourne, have you any castles in Spain ? " said I, without preface. He looked at me for a few moments without speaking, and without seeming to see me. His brow gradually smoothed, and his eyes, apparently looking into the street, were really, I have no doubt, feasting upon the Spanish landscape. MY CHATEAUX. 171 " Too many, too many," said he at length, musingly shaking his head, and without addressing me. I suppose he felt himself too much extended, as we say in Wall Street. He feared, I thought, that he had too much impracticable property elsewhere, to own so much in Spain; so I asked, " Will you tell me what you consider the shortest and safest route thither, Mr. Bourne ? Tor, of course, a man who drives such an immense trade with all parts of the world, will know all that I have come to inquire." " My dear sir," answered he, wearily, " I have been trying all my life to discover it ; but none of my ships have ever been there, none of my captains have any report to make. They bring me, as they brought my father, gold-dust from Guinea; ivory, pearls, and precious stones from every part of the earth; but not a fruit, not a solitary flower, from one of my castles in Spain. I have sent clerks, agents, and travellers of all kinds, philosophers, pleasure-hunters, and invalids, in all sorts of ships, to all sorts of places, but none of them ever saw or heard of my castles, except one young poet, and he died in a mad-house." " Mr. Bourne, will you take five thousand at ninety- seven ? " hastily demanded a man, whom, as he entered, I recognized as a broker. "We'll make a splendid thing of it." Bourne nodded assent, and the broker disappeared. " Happy man ! " muttered the merchant, as the broker went out ; " he has no castles in Spain." " I am sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Bourne," said I, retiring. 172 LITTLE CLASSICS. " I am glad you came," returned he ; " but I assure you, had I known the route you hoped to ascertain from me, I should have sailed years and years ago. People sail for the Northwest Passage, which is nothing when you have found it. Why don't the English Admiralty fit out expeditions to discover all our castles in Spain ? " He sat lost in thought. " It 's nearly post-time, sir," said the clerk. Mr. Bourne did not heed him. He was still musing; and I turned to go, wishing him good morning. When I had nearly reached the door, he called me back, saying, as if continuing his remarks, " It is strange that you, of all men, should come to ask me this question. If I envy any man, it is you, for I sincerely assure you that I supposed you lived alto- gether upon your Spanish estates. I once thought I knew the way to mine. I gave directions for furnishing them, and ordered bridal bouquets, which were never used, but I suppose they are there still." He paused a moment, then said slowly, " How is your wife?" I told him that Prue was well ; that she was always remarkably well. Mr. Bourne shook me warmly by the hand. " Thank you," said he. " Good morning." I knew why he thanked me ; I knew why he thought that I lived altogether upon my Spanish estates ; I knew a little bit about those bridal bouquets. Mr. Bourne, the millionnaire, was an old lover of Prue's. There is something very odd about these Spanish castles. When I think of them, I somehow see the fair-haired girl whom MY CHATEAUX. 173 I knew when I was not out of short jackets. When Bourne meditates them, he sees Prue and me quietly at home in their best chambers. It is a very singular thing that my wife should live in another man's castle in Spain. At length I resolved to ask Titbottom if he had ever heard of the best route to our estates. He said that he owned castles, and sometimes there was an expression in his face, as if he saw them. I hope he did. I should long ago have asked him if he had ever observed the turrets of my possessions in the West, without alluding to Spain, if I had not feared he would suppose I was mocking his poverty. I hope his poverty has not turned his head, for he is very forlorn. One Sunday I went with him a few miles into the country. It was a soft, bright day; the fields and hills lay turned to the sky, as if every leaf and blade of grass were nerves bared to the touch of the sun. I almost felt the ground warm under my feet. The meadows waved and glittered, the lights and shadows were ex- quisite, and the distant hills seemed only to remove the horizon farther away. As we strolled along, picking wild-flowers, for it was in summer, I was thinking what a fine day it was for a trip to Spain, when Titbottom suddenly exclaimed, " Thank God ! I own this landscape." "You?" returned I. " Certainly," said he. "Why," I answered, "I thought this was part of Bourne's property ! " Titbottom smiled. " Does Bourne own the sun and sky ? Does Bourne 174 LITTLE CLASSICS. own that sailing shadow yonder ? Does Bourne own the golden lustre of the grain, or the motion of the wood, or those ghosts of hills, that glide pallid along the horizon ? . Bourne owns the dirt and fences ; I own the beauty that makes the landscape, or otherwise how could I own cas- tles in Spain ? " That was very true. I respected Titbottom more than ever. "Do you know," said he, after a long pause, "that I fancy my castles lie just beyond those distant hills. At all events, I can see them distinctly from their sum- mits." He smiled quietly as he spoke, and it was then I asked, " But, Titbottom, have you never discovered the way to them?" " Dear me ! yes," answered he, " I know the way well enough ; but it would do no good to follow it. I should give out before I arrived. It is a long and difficult jour- ney for a man of my years and habits and income," he added slowly. As he spoke he seated himself upon the ground ; and while he pulled long blades of grass, and, putting them between his thumbs, whistled shrilly, he said, " I have never known but two men who reached their estates in Spain." " Indeed ! " said I, " how did they go ? " " One went over the side of a ship, and the other out of a third-story window," said Titbottom, fitting a broad blade between his thumbs and blowing a demoniacal blast. MY CHATEAUX. 175 "And I know one proprietor who resides upon his estates constantly," continued he. "Who is that?" "Our old friend Slug, whom you may see any day at the asylum, just coming in from the hunt, or going to call upon his friend the Grand Lama, or dressing for the wedding of the Man in the Moon, or receiving an ambassador from Timbuctoo. Whenever I go to see him, Slug insists that I am the Pope, disguised as a journeyman carpenter, and he entertains me in the most distinguished manner. He always insists upon kissing my foot, and I bestow upon him, kneeling, the apostolic benediction. This is the only Spanish proprietor in pos- session with whom I am acquainted." And, so saying, Titbottom lay back upon the ground, and, making a spy-glass of his hand, surveyed the land- scape through it. This was a marvellous book-keeper of more than sixty ! " I know another man who lived in his Spanish castle for two months, and then was tumbled out head first. That was young Stunning, who married old Buhl's daugh- ter. She was all smiles, and mamma was all sugar, and Stunning was all bliss, for two months. He carried his head in the clouds, and felicity absolutely foamed at his eyes. He was drowned in love; seeing, as usual, not what really was, but what he fancied. He lived so ex- clusively in his castle, that he forgot the office down town, and one morning there came a fall, and Stunning was smashed." Titbottom arose, and, stooping over, contemplated the landscape, with his head down between his legs. 176 LITTLE CLASSICS. " It 's quite a new effect, so," said the nimble book- keeper. " Well," said I, " Stunning failed ? " " O yes, smashed all up, and the castle in Spain came down about his ears with a tremendous crash. The family sugar was all dissolved into the original cane in a moment. Fairy-times are over, are they ? Heigh-ho ! the falling stones of Stunning's castle have left their marks all over his face. I call them his Spanish scars." "But, my dear Titbottom," said I, "what is the mat- ter with you this morning ? Your usual sedateness is quite gone." " It 's only the exhilarating air of Spam," he an- swered. " My castles are so beautiful that I can never think of them, nor speak of them, without excitement ; when I was younger I desired to reach them even more ardently than now, because I heard that the philoso- pher's stone was in the vault of one of them." "Indeed," said I, yielding to sympathy; "and I have good reason to believe that the fountain of eternal youth flows through the garden of one of mine. Do you know whether there are any children upon your grounds r " " ' The children of Alice call Bartrum father ! ' " re- plied Titbottom solemnly, and in a low voice, as he fold- ed his faded hands before him, and stood erect, looking wistfully over the landscape. The light wind played with his thin white hair, and his sober black suit was almost sombre in the sunshine. The half-bitter expres- sion, which I had remarked upon his face during part of our conversation, had passed away, and the old sad- ness had returned to his eye. He stood, in the pleasant MY CHATEAUX. 177 morning, the very image of a great proprietor of castles in Spain. "There is wonderful music there/' he said; "some- times I awake at night, and hear it. It is full of the sweetness of youth, and love, and a new world. I lie and listen, and I seem to arrive at the great gates of my estates. They swing open upon noiseless hinges, and the tropic of my dreams receives me. Up the broad steps, whose marble pavement mingled light and shadow print with shifting mosaic, beneath the boughs of lus- trous oleanders, and palms, and trees of unimaginable fragrance, I pass into the vestibule, warm with summer odors, and into the presence-chamber beyond, where my wife awaits me. But castle, and wife, and odorous woods, and pictures, and statues, and all the bright substance of my household, seem to reel and glimmer in the splendor, as the music fails. "But when it swells again, I clasp the wife to my heart, and we move on with a fair society, beautiful women, noble men, before whom the tropical luxuriance of that world bends and bows in homage ; and, through endless days and nights of eternal summer, the stately revel of our life proceeds. Then, suddenly, the music stops. I hear my watch ticking under the pillow. I see dimly the outline of my little upper room. Then I fall asleep, and in the morning some one of the boarders at the breakfast-table says, "'Did you hear the serenade last night, Mr. Tit- bottom?'" I doubted no longer that Titbottom was a very exten- sive proprietor. The truth is, that he was so constantly 8* L IT'S LITTLE CLASSICS. engaged in planning and arranging his castles, that he conversed very little at the office, and I had misinter- preted his silence. As we walked homeward, that day, he was more than ever tender and gentle. " We must all have something to do in this world," said he, " and I, who have so much leisure, for you know I have no wife nor children to work for, know not what I should do, if I had not my castles in Spain to look after." TVlien I reached home, my darling Prue was sitting in the small parlor, reading. I felt a little guilty for hav- ing been so long away, and upon my only holiday too. So I began to say that Titbottom invited me to go to walk, and that I had no idea we had gone so far, and that "Don't excuse yourself," said Prue, smiling as she laid down her book ; " I am glad you have enjoyed your- self. You ought to go out sometimes, and breathe the fresh air, and run about the fields, which I am not strong enough to do. TThy did you not bring home Mr. Tit- bottom to tea ? He is so lonely, and looks so sad. I am sure he has very little comfort in this life," said my thoughtful Prue, as she called Jane to set the tea-table. " But he has a good deal of comfort in Spain, Prue/' answered I. " When was Mr. Titbottom in Spain ? " inquired my wife. " Why, he is there more than half the time," I replied. Prue looked quietly at me and smiled. " I see it has done you good to breathe the country air," said she. " Jane, get some of the blackberry jam, and call Adoni- ram and the children." MY CHATEAUX. 179 So we went in to tea. We eat in the tack parlor, for our little house and limited means do not allow us to have things upon the Spanish scale. It is better than a sermon to hear my wife Prue talk to the children; and when she speaks to me it seems sweeter than psalm- singing; at least, such as we have in our church. I am very happy. Yet I dream my dreams, and attend to my castles in Spain. I have so much property there that I could not, in conscience, neglect it. All the years of my youth, and the hopes of my manhood, are stored away, like precious stones, in the vaults ; and I know that I shall find everything convenient, elegant, and beautiful, when I come into possession. As the years go by, I am not conscious that my inter- est diminishes. If I see that age is subtly sifting his snow in the dark hair of my Prue, I smile contented, for her hair, dark and heavy as when I first saw it, is all carefully treasured in my castles in Spain. If I feel her arm more heavily leaning upon mine, as we walk around the squares, I press it closely to my side, for I know that the easy grace of her youth's motion will be restored by the elixir of that Spanish air. If her voice sometimes falls less clearly from her lips, it is no less sweet to me, for the music of her voice's prime fills, freshly as ever, those Spanish halls. If the light I love fades a little from her eyes, I know that the glances she gave me in our youth are the eternal sunshine of my castles in Spain. I defy time and change. Each year laid upon our heads is a hand of blessing. I have no doubt that I 180 LITTLE CLASSICS. shall find the shortest route to my possessions as soon as need be. Perhaps, when Adoniram is married, we shall all go out to one of my castles to pass the honeymoon. Ah! if the true history of Spain could be written, what a book were there ! The most purely romantic ruin in the world is the Alhambra. But of the Spanish castles, more spacious and splendid than any possible Alhambra, and forever unruined, no towers are visible, no pictures have been painted, and only a few ecstatic songs have been sung. The pleasure-dome of Kubla Khan, which Coleridge saw in Xanadu (a province with which I am not familiar), and a fine Castle of Indolence belonging to Thomson, and the Palace of art which Ten- nyson built as a "lordly pleasure-house" for his soul, are among the best statistical accounts of those Spanish estates. Turner, too, has done for them much the same service that Owen Jones has done for the Alhambra. In the vignette to Moore's Epicurean you will find repre- sented one of the most extensive castles in Spain ; and there are several exquisite studies from others, by the same artists, published in Rogers's Italy. But I confess I do not recognize any of these as mine, and that fact makes me prouder of my own castles ; for, if there be such boundless variety of magnificence in their aspect and exterior, imagine the life that is led there, a life not unworthy such a setting. If Adoniram should be married within a reasonable time, and we should make up>- that little family party to go out, I have considered already what society I should ask to meet the bride. Jephthah's daughter and the Chevalier Bayard, I should say, and fair Rosamond MY CHATEAUX. 181 with Dean Swift. King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba would come over, I think, from his famous castle. Shakespeare and his friend the Marquis of Southamp- ton might come hi a galley with Cleopatra ; and, if any guest were offended by her presence, he should devote himself to the Fair One with Golden Locks. Mephis- topheles is not personally disagreeable, and is exceed- ingly well-bred in society, I am told; and he should come tete-a-tete with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley. Spenser should escort his Eaerie Queen, who would preside at the tea-table. Mr. Samuel Weller I should ask as Lord of Misrule, and Dr. Johnson as the Abbot of Unreason. I would suggest to Major Dobbin to accompany Mrs. Ery ; Alci- biades would bring Homer and Plato in his purple-sailed galley; and I would have Aspasia, Ninon de PEnclos, and Mrs. Battle, to make up a table of whist with Queen Elizabeth. I shall order a seat placed in the oratory for Lady Jane Grey and Joan of Arc. I shall invite General Washington to bring some of the choicest cigars from his plantation for Sir Walter Raleigh; and Chaucer, Browning, and Walter Savage Landor should talk with Goethe, who is to bring Tasso on one arm and Iphigenia on the other. Dante and Mr. Carlyle would prefer, I suppose, to go down into the dark vaults under the castle. The Man in the Moon, the Old Harry, and William of the Wisp would be valuable additions, and the Laureate Tennyson might compose an official ode upon the occa- sion : or I would ask " They " to say all about it. Of course there are many other guests whose names 182 LITTLE CLASSICS. I do not at the moment recall. But I should invite, first of all, Miles Coverdale, who knows everything about these places and this society, for he was at Blithe- dale, and he has described "a select party" which he attended at a castle in the air. Prue has not yet looked over the list. In fact, I am not quite sure that she knows my intention. For I wish to surprise her, and I think it would be generous to ask Bourne to lead her out in the bridal quadrille. I think that I shall try the first waltz with the girl I sometimes seem to see in my fairest castle, but whom I very vaguely remember. Titbottom will come with old Burton and Jaques. But I have not prepared half my invitations. Do you not guess it, seeing that I did not name, first of all, Elia, who assisted at the "Rejoicings upon the new year's coming of age " ? And yet, if Adoniram should never marry? or if we could not get to Spain ? or if the company would not come ? TThat then ? Shall I betray a secret ? I have already entertained this party in my humble little parlor at home, and Prue presided as serenely as Semiramis over her court. Have I not said that I defy time, and shall space hope to daunt me ? I keep books by day, but by night books keep me. They leave me to dreams and reveries. Shall I confess that sometimes when I have been sitting, reading to my Prue, Cymbeline, perhaps, or a Canter- bury tale, I have seemed to see clearly before me the broad highway to my castles in Spain ; and as she looked up from her work, and smiled in sympathy, I have even fancied that I was already there. DREAM-CHILDREN: A REVERT. BY CHARLES LAMB. IHILDKEN love to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children; to stretch t their imagination to the conception of a tradi- tionary great-uncle or grandame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger' than that in which they and papa lived), which had been the scene so at least it was generally believed in that part of the country of the tragic inci- dents which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chim- ney-piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the Robin-Redbreasts ! till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, too tender to be called upbraid- ing. Then I went on to say, how religious and how 184 LITTLE CLASSICS. good their great-grandmother Field was, how beloved and respected by everybody, though she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might "be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable man- sion which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoining county ; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner's other house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, " That would be foolish indeed." And then I told how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended by a con- course of all the poor, and some of the genf ry too, of the neighborhood for many miles round, to show their respect for her memory, because she had been such a good and religious woman ; so good indeed that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their great- grandmother Field once was ; and how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer, here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my look- ing grave, it desisted, the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain ; but it could never bend DREAM-CHILDKEN : A EEVERY. 185 her good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so good and religious. Then I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone cham- ber of the great lone house ; and how she believed that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the great staircase near where she slept, but she said "those innocents would do her no harm " ; and how frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good or religious as she, and yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his eye- brows and tried to look courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her grandchildren, having us to the great house in the holidays, where I in particular used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old basts of the twelve Caesars, that had been Emperors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned into marble with them ; how I never could be tired with roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed out, sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, un- less when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me, and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then, and because I had more pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking up the red berries, and the fir-apples, which were good for nothing but to look at, or in lying 186 LITTLE CLASSICS. about upon the fresh grass with all the fine garden smells around me, or basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy myself ripening too, along with the oranges and the limes in that grateful warmth, or in watching the dace that darted to and fro in the fish- pond, at the bottom of the garden, with here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the water in si- lent state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings, I had more pleasure in these busy -idle diversions than in all the sweet flavors of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such-like common baits of children. Here John slyly deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated divid- ing with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish them for the present as irrelevant. Then, in somewhat a more heightened tone, I told how, though their great-grand- mother Field loved all her grandchildren, yet in an es- pecial manner she might be said to love their uncle, John L , because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us ; and, instead of moping about in solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount the most mettlesome horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, and make it carry him half over the county in a morning, and join the hunters when there were any out, and yet he loved the old great house and gardens too, but had too much spirit to be always pent up within their boundaries, and how their uncle grew up to man's estate as brave as he was handsome, to the admiration of everybody, but of their great-grandmother Field most especially ; and how he used to carry me upon his back when 1 was a lame- DEE AM- CHILDREN : A REVERT. 187 footed boy, for he was a good bit older than me, many a mile when I could not walk for pain ; and how in after life he became lame-footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make allowances enough for him when he was impatient, and in pain, nor remember sufficiently how considerate he had been to me when I was lame- footed ; and how when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and death ; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me ; and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and I missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive again, to be quar- relling with him (for we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not have him again, and was as uneasy without him as he their poor uncle must have been when the doctor took off his limb. Here the children fell a crying, and asked if their little mourning which they had on was not for Uncle John, and they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their pretty dead mother. Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in de- spair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W n ; and, as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness and difficulty and denial meant in maidens, when suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a real- ity of re-presentment, that I became in doubt which of 188 LITTLE CLASSICS. them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was ; and while I stood gazing, both the children grad- ually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still reced- ing, till nothing at last but too mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech : "We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice caU Bartrum father. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name " ; and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget un- changed by my side ; but John L (or James Elia) was gone forever. THE MAN IN THE RESERVOIR. BY CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN. |OU may see some of the best society in New York on the top of the Distributing Reservoir, any of these fine October mornings. There were two or three carriages in waiting, and half a dozen senatorial-looking mothers with young children, pacing the parapet, as we basked there the other day in the sun- shine, now watching the pickerel that glide along the lucid edges of the black pool within, and now looking off upon the scene of rich and wondrous variety that spreads along the two rivers on either side. " They may talk of Alpheus and Arethusa," murmured an idling sophomore, who had found his way thither dur- ing recitation hours, " but the Croton in passing over an arm of the sea at Spuyten-duyvil, and bursting to sight again in this truncated pyramid, beats it all hollow. By George, too, the bay yonder looks as blue as ever the jEgean Sea to Byron's eye, gazing from the Acropolis ! But the painted foliage on these crags ! the Greeks must have dreamed of such a vegetable phenomenon in the midst of their grayish olive groves, or they never 190 LITTLE CLASSICS. would have supplied the want of it in their landscape by embroidering their marble temples with gay colors. Did you see that pike break, sir ? " " I did not." " Zounds ! his silver fin flashed upon the black Acheron, like a restless soul that hoped yet to mount from the pool." " The place seems suggestive of fancies to you ? " we observed in reply to the rattlepate. "It is, indeed, for I have done up a good deal of anxious thinking \vithin a circle of a few yards where that fish broke just now." A singular place for meditation, the middle of the Reservoir ! " " You look incredulous, sir ; but it 's a fact. A fel- low can never tell, until he is tried, in what situation his most earnest meditations may be concentrated. I am boring you, though?" " Xot at all. But you seem so familiar with the spot, I wish you could tell me why that ladder leading down to the water is lashed against the stone-work in yonder corner." " That ladder," said the young man, brightening at the question, " why, the position, perhaps the very exist- ence, of that ladder resulted from my meditations in the Reservoir, at which you smiled just now. Shall I tell you all about them ? " " Pray do." " Well, you have seen the notice forbidding any one to fish in the Reservoir. Now, when I read that warning, the spirit of the thing struck me at once as inferring THE MAN IN THE RESERVOIR. 191 nothing more than that one should not sully the temper- ance potations of our citizens by steeping bait in it, of any kind ; but you probably know the common way of taking pike with a slip -noose of delicate wire. I was determined to have a touch at the fellows with this kind of tackle. " I chose a moonlight night ; and an hour before the edifice was closed to visitors, I secreted myself within the walls, determined to pass the night on the top. All went as I could wish it. The night proved cloudy, but it was only a variable drift of broken clouds which ob- scured the moon. I had a walking cane-rod with me which would reach to the margin of the water, and sev- eral feet beyond if necessary. To this was attached the wire about fifteen inches in length. " I prowled along the parapet for a considerable time, but not a single fish could I see. The clouds made a flickering light and shade, that wholly foiled my stead- fast gaze. I was convinced that should they come up thicker, my whole night's adventure wouldrbe thrown away. ' Why should I not descend the sloping wall and get nearer on a level with the fish, for thus alone can I hope to see one ? ' The question had hardly shaped it- self in my mind before I had one leg over the iron rail- ing. " If you look around you will see now that there are some half-dozen weeds growing here and there, amid the fissures of the solid masonry. In one of the fissures from whence these spring, I planted a foot and began my descent. The Reservoir was fuller than it is now, and a few strides would have earned me to the margin 9* 192 LITTLE CLASSICS. of the water. Holding on to the cleft above, I felt round with one foot for a place to plant it below me. " In that moment the flap of a pound pike made me look round, and the roots of the weed upon which I par- tially depended gave way as I was in the act of turning. Sir, one's senses are sharpened in deadly peril ; as I live now, I distinctly heard the bells of Trinity chiming midnight, as I rose to the surface the next instant, im- mersed in the stone caldron, where I must swim for my life Heaven only could tell how long ! " I am a capital swimmer ; and this naturally gave me a degree of self-possession. Falling as I had, I of course had pitched out some distance from the sloping parapet. A few strokes brought me to the edge. I really was not yet certain but that I could clamber up the face of the wall anywhere. I hoped that I could. I felt certain at least there was some spot where I might get hold with my hands, even if I did not ultimately ascend it. " I tried the nearest spot. The inclination of the wall was so vertical that it did not even rest me to lean against it. I felt with my hands and with my feet. Surely, I thought, there must be some fissure like those in which that ill-omened weed had found a place for its root! " There was none. My fingers became sore in busy- ing themselves with the harsh and inhospitable stones. My feet slipped from the smooth and slimy masonry be- neath the water ; and several times my face came in rude contact with the wall, when my foothold gave way on the instant that I seemed to have found some diminutive rocky cleat upon which I could stay myself. THE MAN IN THE RESERVOIR. 193 " Sir, did you ever see a rat drowned in a half-filled hogshead, how he swims round, and round, and round ; and after vainly trying the sides again and again with his paws, fixes his eyes upon the upper rim as if he would look himself out of his watery prison ? " I thought of the miserable vermin, thought of him as I had often watched thus his dying agonies, when a cruel urchin of eight or ten. Boys are horribly cruel, sir ; boys, women, and savages. All childlike things are cruel ; cruel from a want of thought and from perverse ingenuity, although by instinct each of these is so tender. You may not have observed it, but a savage is as tender to its own young as a boy is to a favorite puppy, the same boy that will torture a kitten out of existence. I thought then, I say, of the rat drowning in a half-filled cask of water, and lifting his gaze out of the vessel as he grew more and more desperate, and I flung myself on my back, and, floating thus, fixed my eyes upon the face of the moon. "The moon is well enough in her way, however you may look at her ; but her appearance is, to say the least of it, peculiar to a man floating on his back in the cen- tre of a stone tank, with a dead wall of some fifteen or twenty feet rising squarely on every side of him ! " (The young man smiled bitterly as he said this, and shuddered once or twice before he went on musingly.) " The last time I had noted the planet with any emotion she was on the wane. Mary was with me ; I had brought her out here one morning to look at the view from the top of the Reservoir. She said little of the scene, but as we talked of our old childish loves, I saw that its fresh features LITTLE CLASSICS. were incorporating themselves with tender memories of the past, and I was content. "There was a rich golden haze upon the landscape, and as my own spirits rose amid the voluptuous atmos- phere, she pointed to the waning planet, discernible like a faint gash in the welkin, and wondered how long it would be before the leaves would fall. Strange girl! did she mean to rebuke my joyous mood, as if we had no right to be happy while Nature withering in her pomp, and the sickly moon wasting in the blaze of noontide, were there to remind us of ' the-gone-forever ' ? ' They will all renew themselves, dear Mary,' said I, encour- agingly, ' and there is one that will ever keep tryst alike with thee and nature through all seasons, if thou wilt but be true to one of us, and remain as now a child of nature.' "A tear sprang to her eye, and then searching her pocket for her card-case, she remembered an engage- ment to be present at Miss Lawson's opening of fall bon- nets at two o'clock ! " And yet, dear, wild, wayward Mary, I thought of her now. You have probably outlived this sort of thing, sir ; but I, looking at the moon, as I floated there upturned to her yellow light, thought of the loved being whose tears I knew would flow when she heard of my singular fate, at once so grotesque, yet melancholy to awfulness. " And how often we have talked, too, of that Carian shepherd who spent his damp nights upon the hills, gazing as I do on the lustrous planet ! Who will revel with her amid those old superstitions ? Who, from our own unlegended woods, will evoke their yet undetected, THE MAN IN THE RESERVOIR. 195 haunting spirits ? Who peer with her in prying scrutiny into nature's laws, and challenge the whispers of poetry from the voiceless throat of matter ? Who laugh merrily over the stupid guess-work of pedants, that never mingled with the infinitude of nature, through love exhaustless and all-embracing, as we have ? Poor girl ! she will be companionless. " Alas ! companionless forever, save in the exciting stages of some brisk flirtation. She will live hereafter by feeding other hearts with love's lore she has learned from me, and then, Pygmalion-like, grow fond of the images she has herself endowed with semblance of divinity, until they seem to breathe back the mystery the soul can truly catch from only one. " How anxious she will be lest the coroner shall have discovered any of her notes in my pocket ! " I felt chilly as this last reflection crossed my mind, partly at thought of the coroner, partly at the idea of Mary being unwillingly compelled to wear mourning for me, in case of such a disclosure of our engagement. It is a provoking thing for a girl of nineteen to have to go into mourning for a deceased lover, at the beginning of her second winter in the metropolis. " The water, though, with my motionless position, must have had something to do with my chilliness. I see, sir, you think that I tell my story with great levity ; but indeed, indeed I should grow delirious did I venture to hold steadily to the awfulness of my feelings the greater part of that night. I think, indeed, I must have been most of the time hysterical with horror, for the vibrating emotions I have recapitulated did pass through my brain even as I have detailed them. 196 LITTLE CLASSICS. " But as I now became calm in thought, I summoned up again some resolution of action. " I will begin at that corner (said I), and s\vim around ttafc whole enclosure. I will swim slowly and again feel the sides of the tank with my feet. If die I must, let me perish at least from well-directed though exhausting effort, not sink from mere bootless weariness in sustain- ing myself till the morning shall bring relief. " The sides of the place seemed to grow higher as I now kept my watery course beneath them. It was not altogether a dead pull. I had some variety of emotion in making my circuit. TThen I swam in the shadow, it looked to me more cheerful beyond in the moonlight. When I swam in the moonlight, I had the hope of making some discovery when I should again reach the shadow. I turned several times on my back to rest just where those wavy lines would meet. The stars looked viciously bright to me from the bottom of "that well; there was such a company of them ; they were so glad in their lustrous revelry ; and they had sucli space to move in ! I was alone, sad to despair, in a strange element, prisoned, and a solitary gazer upon their mocking chorus. And yet there was nothing else with which I could hold com- munion! "I turned upon my breast and struck out almost frantically once more. The stars were forgotten; the moon, the very world of which I as yet formed a part, my poor Mary herself, was forgotten. I thought only of the strong man there perishing; of me in my lusty manhood, in the sharp vigor of my dawning prime, with faculties illimitable, with senses all alert, battling there THE MAN IN THE RESERVOIR. 197 with physical obstacles which men like myself had brought together for my undoing. The Eternal could never have willed this thing ! I could not and I would not perish thus. And I grew strong in insolence of self-trust ; and I laughed aloud as I dashed the sluggish water from side to side. " Then came an emotion of pity for myself, of wild, wild regret ; of sorrow, 0, infinite for a fate so desolate, a doom so dreary, so heart-sickening ! You may laugh at the contradiction if you will, sir, but I felt that I could sacrifice my own life on the instant, to redeem another fellow-creature from such a place of horror, from an end so piteous. My soul and my vital spirit seemed in that desperate moment to be separating ; while one in parting grieved over the deplorable fate of the other. " And then I prayed ! I prayed, why or wherefore I know not. It was not from fear. It could not have been in hope. The days of miracles are passed, and there was no natural law by whose providential interposition I could be saved. I did not pray ; it prayed of itself, my soul within me. " Was the calmness that I now felt, torpidity ? the tor- pidity that precedes dissolution, to the strong swimmer who, sinking from exhaustion, must at last add a bubble to the wave as he suffocates beneath the element which now denied his mastery ? If it were so, how fortunate was it that my floating rod at that moment attracted my attention as it dashed through the water by me. I saw on the instant that a fish had entangled himself in the wire noose. The rod quivered, plunged, came again to the surface, and rippled the water as it shot in arrowy 198 LITTLE CLASSICS. flight from side to side of the tank. At last driven toward the southeast corner of the Reservoir, the small end seemed to have got foul somewhere. The brazen butt, which, every time the fish sounded, was thrown up to the moon, now sank by its own weight, showing that the other end must be fast. But the cornered fish, evidently anchored somewhere by that short wire, floun- dered several times to the surface, before I thought of striking out to the spot. " The water is low now, and tolerably clear. You may see the very ledge there, sir, in yonder corner, on which the small end of my rod rested when I secured that pike with my hands. I did not take him from the slip-noose, however ; but, standing upon the ledge, handled the rod in a workmanlike manner, as I flung that pound pickerel over the iron railing upon the top of the parapet. The rod, as I have told you, barely reached from the railing to the water. It was a heavy, strong bass rod which I had borrowed in the ' Spirit of the Times ' office ; and when I discovered that the fish at the end of the wire made a strong enough knot to prevent me from drawing my tackle away from the railing around which it twined itself as I threw, why, as you can at once see, I had but little difficulty in making my way up the face of the wall with such assistance. The ladder which attracted your notice is, as you see, lashed to the iron railing in the identical spot where I thus made my escape ; and, for fear of similar accidents, they have placed another one in the corresponding corner of the other compartment of the tank ever since my remarkable night's adventure in the Reservoir." WESTMINSTER ABBEY. BY JOSEPH ADDISON. |HEN I am in a serious humor I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey, where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind witli a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtful- uess, that is not disagreeable. I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the churchyard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing myself with the tombstones and inscrip- tions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person but that he was born upon one day and died upon an- other, the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumstances that are common to all man- kind. I could not but look upon these registers of exist- ence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons ; who had left no other memorial of them but that they were born, and that they died. They put me in mind of several persons mentioned in the battles of heroic poems, who have sounding names given 200 LITTLE CLASSICS. them for no other reason but that they may be killed, and are celebrated for nothing but being knocked on the head. Glaucuinque, Medontaque, Thersilochumque, the life of these men is finely described in Holy Writ by "the path of an arrow," which is immediately closed up and lost. Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave, and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up the fragment of a bone or skull, intermixed with a kind of fresh mouldering earth that some time or other had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay con- fused together under the pavement of that ancient cathe- dral ; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled among one another, and blended together in the same common mass ; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness, and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter. After having thus surveyed the great magazine of mortality, as it were, in the lump, I examined it more particularly by the accounts which I found on several of the monuments which are raised in every quarter of that ancient fabric. Some of them were covered with such extravagant epitaphs, that if it were possible for the dead person to be acquainted with them, he would blush at the praises which his friends have bestowed upon him. There are others so excessively modest that they deliver the character of the person departed in Greek or Hebrew, and by that means are not understood once in a twelve- WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 201 month. Li the poetical quarter I found there were poets who had no monuments, and monuments which had no poets. I observed, indeed, that the present war has filled the church with many of these uninhabited monu- ments, which had been erected to the memory of persons whose bodies were, perhaps, buried in the plains of Blen- heim, or in the bosom of the ocean. I could not but be very much delighted with several modern epitaphs, which are written with great elegance of expression and justness of thought, and therefore do honor to the living as well as the dead. As a foreigner is very apt to conceive an idea of the ignorance or politeness of a nation from the turn of their public monu- ments and inscriptions, they should be submitted to the perusal of men of learning and genius before they are put in execution. Sir Cloudesly Shovel's monument has very often given me great oifence. Instead of the brave, rough English admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain, gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long peri- wig, and reposing himself upon velvet cushions, under a canopy of state. The inscription is answerable to the monument ; for, instead of celebrating the many remark- able actions he had performed in the service of his coun- try, it acquaints us only with the manner of his death, in which it was impossible for him to reap any honor. The Dutch, whom we are apt to despise for want of genius, show an infinitely greater taste of antiquity and politeness in their buildings and works of this nature than what we meet with in those of our own country. The monuments of their admirals, which have been 202 LITTLE CLASSICS. erected at the public expense, represent them like them- selves, and are adorned with rostral crowns and naval ornaments, with beautiful festoons of sea-weed, shells, and coral. But to return to our subject. I have left the reposi- tory of our English kings for the contemplation of an- other day, when I shall find my mind disposed for so serious an amusement. I know that entertainments of this nature are apt to raise dark and dismal thoughts in timorous minds and gloomy imaginations ; but for my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy, and can therefore take a view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. By this means I can improve myself with those objects which others consider with terror. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies within me ; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out ; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with com- passion ; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonish- ment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together. THE PURITANS. BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACATJLAY. 1HE Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an over- ruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on the intolerable brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and the meanest of man- kind seemed to vanish, when compared with the bound- less interval which separated the whole race from him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognized no title to superiority but his favor; and, 204 .LITTLE CLASSICS. confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplish- ments and all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the worts of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they felt assured that they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt; for they es- teemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a be- ing to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest actions the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest, who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. Events which short- sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. Tor his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelist and the harp of the prophet. He had been rescued by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the THE PURITANS. 205 rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God. Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion ; the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He pros- trated himself in the dust before his Maker ; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid his face from him. But when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or on the field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death had lost 206 LITTLE CLASSICS. its terrors, and pleasure its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. We perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dis- like the sullen gloom of their domestic habits. We ac- knowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured by straining after things too high for mortal reach. And we know that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that bad system, intolerance and extravagant austerity; that they had their anchorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their De Moutforts, their Dominies and their Escobars. They went through the world like Sir Artegale's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling down all oppressors; mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities ; insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain ; not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier. GETTYSBURG. BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN. |OUE,SCORE and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new na- tion, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final rest- ing-place of those who here gave their lives that that na- tion might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedi- cated to the great task remaining before us ; that from 208 LITTLE CLASSICS. these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain, that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. are subject to immediate recall. (TO . 28Mar'62LZ LD APR 3 1962 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY